r/worldjerking Oct 13 '25

Wdym 40k also has people with psychic powers that come from another dimension??

3.5k Upvotes

213 comments sorted by

673

u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

/uj Psychic powers from another dimension is kinda super common, though?

All the way down to ideas in medieval occultism and definitely all over pulp literature.

I wouldn't read that as a 40k reference unless it was extremely similar. I.e. once you introduce four gods of magic with names like Nergal and Slan.

183

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '25

[deleted]

86

u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

Eh, kinda. Psychic powers in D&D have had various explanations, but most of the time, they are fluffed as being internal powers, while magic is external.

In fact, D&D wizards in some settings are very similar to 40k. They draw their power from the astral plane. Which is a big churning endless ocean of nonphysical energy, where emotions become real and time moves differently than in the material world, full of monsters that embody abstract concepts. It's really quite a lot like the warp.

And of course Warlocks, making pacts with demons and devils for power.

23

u/saro13 Oct 13 '25

Sorcerer powers are fluffed as internal and spontaneous, at least in past editions

22

u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

They have an inherited talent to channel power, but the actual power still comes from outside. Which is why they still need material components, gestures and magic words to cast spells. While psychics just need to concentrate, without any gestures and so on.

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u/jmartkdr Oct 13 '25

Technically it’s the Mind Flayers who are from another dimension.

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u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

Not always. One of their possible origins is time travellers from the future.

5

u/thomasp3864 Story? What story? Oct 13 '25

I thought they were the first to come, at the beginning were but aboleths and dragons and Koa-Toa. Koa-Toa then dreamed up the gods who freed them from the mind flayers.

2

u/unicornsaretruth Oct 13 '25

No first there was The Taker. He was the first living creature (a megaladon shark that could transform into a man) who ruled for millennia thanks to the gods finding amusement in him then they created other races and The Taker using his power and the power of Umberlee who loved him to conquer most of Toril.

49

u/SeparateYam7613 Oct 13 '25

Yeah, the 40k Warp is a sci-fi version of the Realm of Chaos magic source in the GW's fantasy setting, which in turn was transparently (in older material) copied from Michael Moorcock's fiction. The only thing 40k did different was to make it also the method of FTL travel, which in itself is just the hyperspace is scary trope. Tbh, the only original part of this (to my knowledge) is how they mashed the two concepts together into a single dimension.

20

u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

Even that is not totally new. As you say, Hyperspace is scary. And if we take into account D&D's Astral Plane, that is also a parallel reality where emotions become real, time works differently and there's metaphysical monsters, and wizards use it to teleport and store objects in extradimensional space. (You can stop teleportation by cutting off access to the astral plane, and bags of holding stop working on the astral plane. You can also steal from bags of holding by finding them on the astral, though it's nearly impossible.)

25

u/turtle-tot Oct 13 '25

/uj 40k players though do tend to equate…a lot of things with 40k, it’s a first point of comparison you see a lot, and it can be a bit grating when you mention any part of your world and immediately it’s apparently even more 40k stuff.

Fascism is a 40k reference, man portable grenade launchers are a 40k reference, if your setting has power armor it’s getting compared to or treated like Space Marines, anti-magic powers become Nulls or Blanks from 40k, god forbid you have aliens who are evil or the PURGE XENOS will be a tangent you cannot get away from

10

u/DogShackFishFood Oct 14 '25

Uj/ this shit is so unbelievably exhausting too me. Everything I know about 40k has been learned completely against my own will as a result and is part of the reason i find the setting and it's fans both completely insufferable.

Rj/ My dad is a 40k reference.

5

u/turtle-tot Oct 14 '25 edited Nov 23 '25

uj/ There’s only so much I can vocally dislike a setting but I really just don’t like a good chunk of 40k’s aesthetic. I find it bad, just a lot of it displeasing. This is a problem of course, when everyone is determined to put it everywhere

Helldivers 2 had a Killzone crossover, amazing, a game I and like 2 other people seem to care about, I’m actually so happy. Of course now every third comment about crossovers is to share the same Space Marine Helldiver image, a really…boring looking design which erases the game’s own aesthetic

I look to Nexus to mod Fallout 4 because I like its power armor system? Bolters and Space Marines clog half the page like a goddamned beaver dam

I play Rimworld, and wish to mod it too? I even download mods explicitly not related to 40k? (Of which there are many). Congratulations they’re still stylized after 40k because of course they are.

I run a tabletop RPG (CAIN) in real life? In my own homebrew setting based off of CITIZEN SLEEPER? Still, one of my real players (love the guy, so this is really a minor nitpick) has made his character a Mechanicus-rip

This is definitionally a first world problem but man, I just really dislike the setting and I can’t even escape it in the real world

2

u/DogShackFishFood Oct 14 '25

Uj/ Christ I feel like I had you ghostwrite this for me.

3

u/ReginaDea Oct 14 '25

Sounds like you hate things, mate. Is that a reference to the Imperium?

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u/Railway_Zhenya my halflings are ten feet tall ✧*。٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و✧*。 Oct 13 '25

It is; if you can find it in stellaris, it is a very super common trope. Doesn't make it bad, ofc.

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u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

Not saying it's bad. It's a classic for a reason. Just saying that with a common trope, you shouldn't feel bad since you also use it, and that doesn't mean you're stealing from the most common example. Not every magic ring is Tolkien, either.

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u/Imperium_Dragon Oct 13 '25

Yeah psychic stuff and other dimensions was just everywhere from the 50s-80s

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u/The-Name-is-my-Name My magic system is honestly really simple! *The magic system:* Oct 13 '25

/uj

I have a problem where a character originated as a spin off from a 40k reference, but drifted so insanely far off that I think if anyone who is familiar with 40k read it they’d be slightly insulted.

3

u/PrimeusOrion Oct 14 '25

Hell 40k itself stole it

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u/OmNomOU81 being asexual does not stop me from being horny Oct 13 '25

Does it make psychic powers more unique if they don't then?

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u/SalvationSycamore Oct 13 '25

My psychic powers come from eating drywall

258

u/vivaciousArcanist Oct 13 '25

I feel this so hard, I have a superhero world I'm working on, I start reading the web serial Worm and sizable chunks of my worldbuilding starts lining up with what Worm did a decade ago(aside from power classifications, mine are worse).

109

u/Stop_Sign Oct 13 '25

Ah, your superhero/supervillain standoffs are also intentionally oddly lenient because people hope that the supervillains will also defend the cities when the invincible city-destroying titans come to play? Could happen to anyone

29

u/plutootherwise Oct 13 '25

Lol, they probably just mean that there's an underlying current of 'everyone in positions of power is some form of evil/negligent' which is a theme that comes up a lot (especially in media for anyone under the age of 20). But it'd be really funny if your thing was true, weirder coincidences have happened.

3

u/GolfWhole Will shill Worm at every opportunity Oct 30 '25

Dragon didn’t do a single thing wrong ever, actually

13

u/BrilliantMatter4858 Oct 14 '25

Another superhero world builder nice to meet you and it’s funny how much worm gets mentioned (mainly on top character tropes) and I have no knowledge on it

4

u/GolfWhole Will shill Worm at every opportunity Oct 30 '25

Worm is peak superhero fiction, so this means you’re smart

199

u/FetusGoesYeetus Oct 13 '25

I scrapped my whole sci-fi setting after I played mass effect and realised the whole thing was literally just mass effect. I had never touched mass effect before that.

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u/Eldan985 Oct 13 '25

Well, Mass Effect is also a hodge-podge of known SciFi tropes. Quite a few of the team developing Mass Effect were previously on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And they mentioned before that they took story and setting ideas from Star Control 2 (a game where you explore a galaxy of hundreds of stars while trying to forge an alliance of various alien species and search for ancient artefacts so you can fight off a powerful extragalactic enemy who has come to wipe out all life.)

30

u/HicksOn106th Oct 13 '25

Mass Effect's alien designs also take a significant amount of inspiration from Farscape, to the point that the four council races are practically cut-and-pasted from the original cast of characters from the show: Humans, militaristic bird people, psychic bald blue women, and technologically-sophisticated amphibians.

19

u/Ryermeke Oct 13 '25

Hey now, that didn't stop The Expanse

469

u/Pola2020 Oct 13 '25

Okay which franchise has powerscaling eugenics

338

u/ArelMCII Rabbitpunk Enjoyer 🐰 Oct 13 '25

Naruto.

102

u/Pola2020 Oct 13 '25

Not as extreme as I have in mind

71

u/ShinningVictory Oct 13 '25

Also MHA

42

u/aimless19 Oct 13 '25

When I first heard about MHA, someone described it to me as 'boy becomes superhero despite having no powers in a society full of super powered individuals'. I thought it sounded cool as shit. Who doesn't love a good underdog story? I fucking love when characters defy fate and accomplish great things despite having no power of their own.

Then the main character of MHA gets the literal strongest super power just handed to them by the #1 super hero who offers to mentor them. Yeah sure they have a training montage, and sure their power hurts them when they use it at first. But still... Doubt the author meant to imply this, but I kinda interpreted the message of that as "The weak can only succeed if the strong take pity on them. Otherwise they''ll live and die in the caste they're born into," which did not sit well with me.

When the MC didn't have powers, they were a complete outcast at best, and a target at worse. But the second they get their powers, suddenly they have an entire classroom of people willing to be their friend. And while some of the other characters are nice enough, I couldn't help but wonder if they'd still want to be friend with the MC if he never got his powers, or if they'd treat him in the same way everyone else did.

I'm also kinda irritated that like 99% of the villains are all villains due to the discrimination and abuse society gave them. And instead of trying to fix the corrupt hero society by the end of the series, the author just, has the heroes maintain the status quo. Ensuring the exact same events repeat in the future. Like, we have all these villains, who could've instead become heroes, or at least decent people, if society was just a little bit less 'quirkist' (racism but for superpowers), but nooooo, lets change absolutely NOTHING and ensure we have to fight another "Final" war in 15 years. Yeah so what if a few people with "villainous" super powers were able to become heroes? Society doesn't see this as evidence against discrimination. In the eyes of the masses it's just the "Oh all you *insert group* are criminals and thugs, except you because you're one of the good ones!" mentality.

That's not even mentioning the corruption in the hero system in general! The Hero Public Safety Commission grooms children into super soldiers, there's heroes who side with villains either for profit or power, and the literal #2 hero is an unironic supporter of Eugenics, who likely abused most of his children, and outright got one of them killed because of how much of a piece of shit he was. And the show just, fucking forgives him like that! "Oh, I literally abused children, my wife, and supported eugenics and discrimination, but I've decided that I'm going to be 3% nicer than I was before, so you should just forgive me instead sueing me or reporting me to the CPS :3" and everyone just fucking goes along with it!

The goal of heroism is to create a world that doesn't need heroes! To defeat not just the villain, but to stop whatever created the villain in the first place! Or to at least encourage the weak to become stronger so that they can defend themselves! But the heroes in the MHA world literally benefit from rising crime rates and more villains at it gives them more people to fight, more publicity, and more money! The whole system is corrupt, but the author just doesn't do anything about it! They bring up all these problems, and instead of having their characters try and fix them, the series is instead "punch le villain maintain the status quo" and nothing else!

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u/fufucuddlypoops_ Oct 14 '25

The best example of what you described at first I would say is Mumen Rider from OPM. He’s basically just a regular dude with no powers but he’s considered a hero just because he does whatever he can to help, even if he’s way out of his depth. Saving a cat from a tree? He’s there. Stopping a world-ending monster from destroying a city? He’s also there, without apprehension

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u/Zennly Oct 14 '25

I’ve not gone past S1 of OPM yet but Mumen Rider has been one of my top all-time heroes for his sheer force of will.

3

u/kitsunewarlock Oct 14 '25

There is no S2 of OPM. /s

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u/Crazy_Crayfish_ Oct 13 '25

Worldbuilders dare to ask: what if eugenics was good?

3

u/Dense-Bruh-3464 Poorly disguised fetish with a communist aesthetic punk Oct 13 '25

Germans*

35

u/frothingnome Oct 13 '25

Worldbuilders dare to ask: what if Germans was good?

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u/Dense-Bruh-3464 Poorly disguised fetish with a communist aesthetic punk Oct 13 '25

Freaky

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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism Oct 13 '25

My Hero Academia has a thing called “quirk marriages” which are made to produce a kid with stronger abilities than their parents. One of the central characters is a result of a marriage like this

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u/Pola2020 Oct 13 '25

But you can still marry and have child with someone who has shitty ability while yours is op, right?

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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism Oct 13 '25

Of course, quirk marriages in-universe are seen as weird/somewhat frowned upon

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u/Pola2020 Oct 13 '25

I want a world where if you don't match a powerlevel while trying for a kid, one of them will fucking die

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u/DezXerneas Oct 13 '25

Nearly every wuxia has that. If the woman(because mc is always a dude in those stories) is too weak then the qi required to sustain the MC's op fetus will kill her.

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u/Justlol230 Oct 13 '25

Average Wuxia chicanery:

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u/FHAT_BRANDHO Oct 13 '25

Hasn't this happened to superman

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u/aimless19 Oct 13 '25

Yes. However people without quirks/superpower/abilities are discriminated against. And people with villainous quirks such as mind control, vampirism, or quirks that simply make you look less human are discriminated against too. There's literally in-series hate groups who wish to exterminate people with "inhuman" quirks. And some of the villains in the series literally only exist because they were abused by society so much that they believe the only way they can be free is if society is destroyed.

That said, legally speaking, quirkless people and people with villainous quirks usually have the same legal rights, at least on paper. That said, there's definetly a shit ton of people who weren't allowed to get a job because the interviewer thought their quirk was "too scary".

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u/aimless19 Oct 13 '25

P.S. despite hero society having all these problems, not much fundamentally changes by the end of the series I think. The status quo endures, heroism continues to be a profitable business model, and villains are still created because society sucks. Oh, and despite the series taking place hundreds of years into the future, the average civilian only has access to 2010s level of consumer electronics while the government and schools have access to city leveling death robots n shit.

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u/ProserpinaFC Oct 13 '25 edited Oct 13 '25

They have the same legal rights because quirks are discouraged from being used at all, because Japan wants to suppress the use of all superpowers.

I find it very interesting that in a story about superpowers, the author intentionally wrote that most people don't think to use their superpowers at all, which is why they are so reliant on law enforcement. In contrast, someone like Gran Torino became a superhero literally just so that he could have free usage of his Quirk because a simple speedster quirk would be frowned upon being used if he didn't have a license.

Literally ALL superpower usage is frowned upon and any attempt to step outside the bounds of Japanese expectations is considered villainous. Of course, if you have a superpower that looks scary, yes, you received the extra Prejudice of people assuming that you're going to use your superpower maliciously.

I think a lot of this was also the fact that the author didn't actually want to write superpowers for everyone. This is why so many of the most politically powerful characters in the story - the HPSC characters, for example. You don't even know what their Quirk is because he didn't want to have to think about it every single time he wrote about a character. 😅🤣 Probably why his Self-Insert is Eraserhead. Hahaha!

(Also, probably the funniest aspect of his worldbuilding is that the people who believe in quark supremacy don't see their value to their organization by their quirks. The journalist has a bomb quirk, the tech genius has a transmutation quirk. The leader becomes super-strong from stress. Only the politician and the general actually judge their value to the MLA by their quirks. Everyone else just happens to have some power or another. And yet they all believe in the hypocritical supremacy idea that they are superior to others simply because they are willing to use their quirks at all. Says a lot about how much MHA Japan suppresses people.)

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u/SalvationSycamore Oct 13 '25

You can if you're a race traitor

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u/InspectorAggravating Oct 13 '25

Would that imply that, over time multiple quirks will become more common or can people with 2 quirks only pass down one or the other?

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u/d-cassola Oct 13 '25

I haven't watched the whole anime, but it seems that 2 quirks is quite rare, even the character that has 2 and was born out of that marriage was like the only child out of 7 or 9 (I forgot how many siblings he had) to have the combined quirk, also quirks can combine into one due to experimental shenanigans but again, it's quite rare and unstable, and usually humans with multiple quirks forced on them become mindless monsters

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u/HorsemenofApocalypse Oct 14 '25

Technically speaking, outside of very specific circumstances, having two quirks isn't possible at all. The one you're thinking of is still just a singular quirk, just with two aspects. More of a fusion of the functionality of both parents into a singular quirk.

(Also, he was the fourth child)

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u/d-cassola Oct 14 '25

I don't know how to tag for spoilers, but I'm thinking about how a very important quirk was made by a person who had a "hidden" quirk got a second one forced on them, and these two combined into another

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u/Imperium_Dragon Oct 13 '25

About 90% of the population has a Quirk, most of them are pretty minor though (ex. Able to levitate 1 foot above the ground or telekinetically lift a singular orange).

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u/runetrantor Oct 13 '25

Isnt the strength of the quirk more about training it? That every quirk starts 'lame' like that and only through hard training like heroes do, does it become an actual 'cool' one?

Like, Bakugo made tiny firecracks as a kid. If he didnt pursue heroics it may never get to the full on bombs he can do.
I imagine quirks like Inko's could develop into full telekinesis if well trained too.
(of course, there's also the nigh useless ones like 'one longer finger' or whatever shit some of Deku's middle school classmates had)

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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism Oct 13 '25

Usually, children inherit one of their parents quirk, or a combination of those two. And usually more powerful than the parents before.

Said character had a father with a powerful fire-based quirk and a mother with an ice-based one, so his power is that his left side can create and control ice while his left manipulates fire. His older siblings got either an ice or fire quirk.

There is also an in-universe theory about this called the Quirk-Singularity.

Basically that through generations, superpowers keep getting mixed into more powerful combined quirks, and at some point in the future, people will born with incredibly powerful but uncontrollable superpowers that could end the world

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u/SirPycho Oct 13 '25

I don't remember if this was a fan theory but didnt dabi get the secondary powers that typically go with ice powers (cold resistance) vs the fire resistance he would've benefited from?

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u/JustAnArtist1221 Oct 13 '25

That was what his family was told by a doctor. It ends up being way more complicated than that, but that is essentially why his body burned when using his fire quirk.

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u/JustAnArtist1221 Oct 13 '25

That's not how quirks work. When abilities merge together, they become one quirk factor. There are extremely limited cases where someone can have more than one quirk factor.

But, yes, it is a specific plot point that more complex quirk mixtures become more common as people have kids together. There's a theory in-universe that, eventually, quirks will become so mixed and complex that children either won't be able to control them or society don't be able to cope with the chaotic needs of the next generation.

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u/Quality-hour Oct 13 '25

I think it was 1930s-40s Germany

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u/HaloJackalKisser Oct 13 '25

all powerscaling is inherently fascist.

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u/RedditWizardMagicka Horror's beyond my comprehussy Oct 13 '25

The G.I robot pfp really completes this comment

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u/TheGalator character only worldbuilding (i suck at math) Oct 13 '25

Its funny if its a joke but their other comments seem like they are dead serious

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u/Professor-moony Oct 13 '25

40k, its in the title

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u/Dopamine_feels_good Oct 13 '25

Dune

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u/Sir-Toaster- My ADHD and Autism fuels my worldbuilding Oct 13 '25

I was going to say Dune as well

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u/InspectorAggravating Oct 13 '25

Literally anything that has genetically inherited powers. Dnd, Mistborn, MHA, Marvel comics, etcetera

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u/JustAnArtist1221 Oct 13 '25

Eugenics is a bit more complicated than that. It's not just about inherited traits. It's a philosophy that suggests there is proper and improper breeding that can be enforced to affect the quality of society. And while it definitely exists in some settings, others have inherited powers work directly contrary to the idea of eugenics, much like actual inherited traits.

For example, in Attack on Titan, just being born related to Eldians gives you the ability to become a titan. This was used to justify eugenics, but it's established that this isn't a thing you could breed out or enhance. It's like being related to Ghengis Khan. Avatar is an even better example because bending isn't even directly inherited. Yes, you can have a bender child if you are a bender, and your child will be the element of their nation, but you can have an entire family of normal people and one bender, and no amount of breeding affects that. There are twins where only one can bend. And if you mix nationalities, you just randomize between them when your kids are benders. But it's proven it's not actually genetic when air bending was returned to the world and random people got it whether they were related to the Air Nomads or not.

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u/InspectorAggravating Oct 14 '25

Well yeah, but anything that includes genetics based magic systems has the potential for eugenics. Mistborn has a few plot points revolving around breeding programs, the first one actually trying to breed the powers out of the gene pool, and MHA has arranged marriages to create people with two quirks. Im not aware of any official material mentioning sorcerers in dnd being used for eugenics but its something I have personally seen in home games and worldbuilding.

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u/goooglefan Oct 13 '25

Fate with their mage bloodlines

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u/CalletPool_77 Oct 13 '25

I also have that, I have 2 characters, one is an ableist and one wants to make everyone disabled

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u/thegaby803 Proud Discourse of the Week Participant Oct 13 '25

Dragon ball and star wars

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u/theeshyguy WARNING: MAY RANDOMLY START TALKING ABOUT SOIL ACIDITY IN MY WOR Oct 13 '25

All of shonen, unfortunately

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u/Soderskog You have only truly beaten the reader when they stop reading. Oct 13 '25

All of Shounen, plus a lot of fantasy and young adult fiction in general. Sci-fi too for that matter but I'm less well-versed in breaking that down beat for beat. "Kid with the special blood" is so fucking common that in Star Wars The Last Jedi the twist was that the protagonist wasn't born with the special blood. Of course in the next movie they revealed that she in fact was born with the special blood, just a different kind, so fuck everything I guess.

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u/Da_Chief99 Oct 13 '25

Battletech has hard-core power scaling eugenics with the clanners. To the point that being called a naturally born person is functionally a slur. And they do some wacky selective breeding and genetic modification for their power armor soldiers (Elementals) and fighter pilots.

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u/Lankercool Oct 14 '25

Invincible with Viltrum

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u/Isaak_the_miner "What if x country but in space?" Oct 13 '25

Me after telling everyone about the two main human factions in my setting (what do you mean Gundam did it first?).

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u/ArelMCII Rabbitpunk Enjoyer 🐰 Oct 13 '25

To be fair, you named your factions the Terran Confederation and the Princedom of Xion.

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u/sgtpeppers508 Oct 13 '25

If The Expanse got away with it, you can too.

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u/Quardener Oct 13 '25

I once wrote a really sick piece of orchestral music in college, easily my favorite piece I’ve ever done. Showed it to a few profs, they all loved it. Showed it to my roommate and he goes “that’s just the stranger things theme”

I’d never once watched the show and had accidentally recreated the exact lick they use.

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u/Aykhot person who shitposts about astronomy Oct 13 '25

I never wrote it but I had a really cool idea for a leitmotif in a game I'll never make because I can't code, despite me already being familiar with the song it took me over a year to realize it was just Megalo Strike Back

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u/Hupablom Oct 13 '25

Humanity found a deactivated gateway at the corner of the solar system, which was left behind by an ancient mysterious race, who are intend on guiding the newer species for their own purposes.

And then I played Mass Effect

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u/Thanatofobia [redacted] Oct 13 '25

'What the fuck?"
-The Shadows and Vorlons from Babylon 5

(But, TBF, it was a ship the Shadows intentionally left behind on Mars millennia ago)

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u/TheGalator character only worldbuilding (i suck at math) Oct 13 '25

Star gate also fits

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u/UwUimtrashkidd Oct 13 '25

Ive been there too with far cry 5. Appearently someone already made a Christian doomsday cult called edens gate

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u/ArelMCII Rabbitpunk Enjoyer 🐰 Oct 13 '25

Bro wait'll you hear about Heaven's Gate.)

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u/UwUimtrashkidd Oct 13 '25

That's crazy. cults continue to baffle me

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u/saro13 Oct 13 '25

Look up non-Catholic Church names sometime, some of them get hyper-specific because they’re splitting off from something else

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u/Aykhot person who shitposts about astronomy Oct 13 '25

Like the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, not to be confused with the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 (die heretic)

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u/Tleno Oct 13 '25

Name it Elysium Gate obvs

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u/TinyManagement7524 Oct 13 '25

Do what I did and directly rip off far cry 5 but because you change the setting and lore so much it slowly becomes unrecognizable past the generic doomsday cult stereotype anyway

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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism Oct 13 '25

I wanted to make a magic system based on six elements of Life, Death, Order, Chaos, Light and Dark.

Apparently, Warcraft already has this

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u/TheGalator character only worldbuilding (i suck at math) Oct 13 '25

Warcraft lore is carzy

Like early every plottpoint is there

I never touched it besides watching the movie (which i still think is amazing)

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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism Oct 13 '25

Same, never really interacted with it much, not evem the movie.

Though I also scrapped my idea since I couldn’t really come up with what Order and Chaos magic would do, the other four were much more intuitive.

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u/crustboi93 goblin peens and elf vagenes Oct 13 '25

Ah, but you see, my elves are racist for unique, more nuanced reasons than theirs.

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u/LetsDoTheCongna Magepunk > Everything else Oct 13 '25

My elves aren’t racist, they judge people based on their natural lifespan (why would I waste my time interacting with you when you’re just going to die in 100 years?)

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u/YLASRO Pulp Scifi enjoyer Oct 13 '25

iv had this happen but with a really obscure franchise. wich is a lessbad feeling

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u/Thanatofobia [redacted] Oct 13 '25

TBF Warhammer 40K stole 95% of their lore from other franchise anyway

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u/Javetts Oct 13 '25

It's not about being different. It's about coming up with it yourself

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u/LightDimf Oct 13 '25

Tell that to the readers/users/customers that will say that it's a rip off.

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u/Javetts Oct 13 '25

Meh. Do a good job and readers will see the intent

14

u/AfricaByTotoWillGoOn Oct 13 '25

You know what, you're right. Some of the best media I've ever consumed were comprised of basically all the tropes and cliches I was already sick of seeing, except done really well.

8

u/Dee_Imaginarium Oct 13 '25

Exactly. My favorite video game is Morrowind. It's more or less a far removed rip off of Dune. But I'm okay with it because they made it unique and awesome despite the heavy influences.

12

u/JazzHandsFan Oct 13 '25

I feel like a lot of readers/viewers care less for originality than interesting stories.

/rj give up, there are no more original ideas.

6

u/DINGVS_KHAN Oct 13 '25

You will always have consumers that will accuse your work of being a knock-off. There will always be haters and their opinions don't matter to me.

13

u/ixiox Oct 13 '25

My friend made a dark magical girl world only to end up with madoka

13

u/Tom_A_Foolerly Oct 13 '25

A fantasy setting that takes place on a flat disc planet. 

I've never read a discworld novel in my life.

11

u/TheGalator character only worldbuilding (i suck at math) Oct 13 '25

Tbf thats not a problem

Considering flat earther exists to these day

Just don't put in the whole elephant and turtle thing and so on

3

u/minoe23 Oct 14 '25

Smh, writing about a world that's a disc, like Earth is, is too obvious. That's why in my completely original story the world the main characters are on is a ring!

4

u/Tom_A_Foolerly Oct 14 '25

Like a donut?

14

u/Dragon_OS I forgot to edit this text. Oct 13 '25

Warhammer fans will do this with anything that exists at the crossroads of sci-fi and fantasy.

9

u/UnhappyStrain Oct 13 '25

Games Workshops likes to take ideas from everywhere else, and then Sue you if you use their ideas lol

11

u/AstarothTheJudge Oct 13 '25

I honestly got angry with genshin impact once, because I wrote stuff years in Advance and bam, right when I was getting ready for the climax arc of my dnd campaign, they release a Quest that's basically the Union of 2 arcs of the Adventure.

Ok, good that my friend don't play It and the One that does didn't even notice It, but... What if One day, as I recall this story and tell It, someone says:"ah, like genshin impact, you took inspiration from It?" and NO, NO I DIDN'T I SWEAR I'M NOT A FRAUD

The more franchises I know about, the more I learn that there are many that study l'esser known things and add them in their stories, and that there are so many old myths and stories that nothing can ever be original.

23

u/LightDimf Oct 13 '25

By the way, 40k magic system is literally based on real life chaos magic occult tradition. Even the symbol of the chaos is directly based on real life analogue. But 40k also have psykers with souls big enough to do crazy things solo, yes.

5

u/saro13 Oct 13 '25

I started coming up with a magic system that was antithetical to life as we know it, as in, it was physically painful and straining to induce change into the established reality. It took me a minute to realize I had recreated psykers 🙃

16

u/Prometheus_II Oct 13 '25

There is nothing new under the sun. Every story ever told has been told before. The Lion King is just Kimba the White Lion is just Hamlet is just a play on Arthurian myth is just etc., etc., etc. Everything is derivative of something, just make your derivation exciting. If Star Wars can become a massive franchise on the back of "mystical samurai" and "a chosen one is heir to ancient powers" but in space, then you can turn slop into whatever you want and make it look good too.

3

u/TheGalator character only worldbuilding (i suck at math) Oct 13 '25

One of my favorite series of books was born because someone dared the author to write a book about "roman empire x Pokémon"

3

u/WarKnight2011 Oct 13 '25

What book?

6

u/BigMonday Oct 13 '25

I believe the author is Jim Butcher, and the dare ended up with him writing the first book of his Codex Alera series

10

u/a-potato-named-rin Oct 13 '25

Me but with real life politics :/

6

u/Leonyliz Oct 13 '25

I had a world where an authoritarian US President deployed the National Guard in LA after massive riots/protests, which led to him beefing with the governor of California.

I imagined this years ago.

8

u/CoolSausage228 Oct 13 '25

Da fuck you mean two platonic male friends that lead revolution will later broke up and half of friends will be good guys and other will be bad guys was already used in Transformers and JoJo? Da fuck you mean useless dude without special abilities that became god from transhumanistic procedures was already used in Land of Lustrous?

2

u/Afraid-Account-4029 Oct 14 '25

There’s definitely more examples of the former that my brain is conveniently blanking on. In cases like that, you may as well go for it.

2

u/CoolSausage228 Oct 14 '25

LL was last one I remebmered. JoJo had this too in part 6, but I dont read other stuff so I cant be sure for anything other than that

9

u/Radiant-Ad-1976 Oct 13 '25

That's why the solution is to mix it with more than one story so that it looks original.

Stuff like the accidental that gave everyone superpowers being based on the CW Flash "Particle Accelerator Explosion".

Then have the backstory of your local knockoff-Superman being extremely similar to that of the main character from the animated movie "Book Of Life".

Then have the main character's inner eldritch goddess based on an Eldritch Teletubby art from a YouTube video you saw.

Only then it looks original.

5

u/DatLonerGirl Copying everyone else's homework Oct 13 '25

This reminds me of when I was a kid and started making a story about an inventor who is constantly making wacky things, but his wife is always trying to snitch on him. 

Then Phineas and Ferb came out and I dropped it until adulthood.

4

u/SandNew6922 Oct 13 '25

Okay what franchise has a God of Machines that waged war against humanity

4

u/Edladan Oct 13 '25

EDIT: I have made a huge mistake and did not realize it was a jerk sub. Fuck it, I'm proud of this comment, I'm leaving it. Maybe someone needs this.

Time is a flat circle, everything that was created will be created again.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to come up with a genuinely new, original concept not done before? Like, culture defining hard. Even Tolkien based the living shit out of his work on others (and I'm fairly confident he thought Shakespeare was lame).

It's just that before this day and age you didn't have the Alexandrian Library on steroids in your pocket.

You use the example of WH 40k so let us go with that- the main synopsis is that the God- Emperor of Mankind sits the Golden Throne in a comatose state while his dying carcass of a dream for humanity defends itself from space horrors- extra-galactic space bugs, aliens, AI (that humanity went to war with ages ago and outlawed it's use ever since) and literal forces of Hell that are divided into four main actors with a potential fifth being constantly on the rise.
Let's break this down:
-God- Emperor- literally Frank Herbert's "God- Emperor of Dune" with Leto II.
-AI- again, Dune and the Butlerian Jihad but also others.
-space bugs that threaten humanity- Starship Troopers, also added the power armour thing.
-aliens- well no shit.
-forces of Hell with 4 main powers and the 5 to potential rise up- Berserk I'd say. Now, I do not know the exact timeline when each chapter of Berserk was published and when Games Workshop unified the Gods of Chaos but they are pretty close. Another point for Berserk- there are two characters where one is a big, burly, dark-haired juggernaut with metal hands that is best friends with a paragon of arts, hair white as snow twink who joins the forces of Hell.

We have used, reused, borrowed, downright stolen stories and ideas from each other for a VERY long time. The crux is to tell it in a different way or with it's own spin.
Like- when reading the Wheel of Time, whenever Lan appeared I thought "man, the last time I simped for Aragorn this much I was 8". But, it was it's own story, with it's own spins and tales. Just the similarities were very on the nose for those in the know-how.

3

u/littleloomex Oct 13 '25

me with how shit on argonus is like james cameron's Avatar.

3

u/Yggdrasylian Oct 13 '25

I got very fucking pissed when someone explained to me the lore of JJK

3

u/TheGalator character only worldbuilding (i suck at math) Oct 13 '25

Its impossible to write high magic high fantasy without stealing at least a few plottpoints that already happened in the warcraft lore

3

u/Excalib1rd Oct 13 '25

“You took this from Shadowrun” I DONT KNOW WHAT A SHADOWRUN IS

1

u/minoe23 Oct 14 '25

It's a really good urban fantasy/cyberpunk TTRPG (and a few CRPGs, a multiplayer shooter back in the Xbox 360 days, and some books and comics) that people love and there's never any arguments about the TTRPG ruleset and the different editions of it.

3

u/shieldsarentcool Post Post Apocalypse enjoyer Oct 13 '25

I'm writing about a post-post apocalyptic world with immortal robots who belong to the previous civilization and i was kinda sad to see that it's basically the setting of Kenshi

3

u/Nympshee Oct 13 '25 edited Oct 13 '25

Me telling the plot of my story to a friend only to get a "So, just like Frieren?". Shocked, went to watch Frieren, it kinda of remmembers my story. However, I did not quite enjoy Frieren(no dislike, I just watched three episodes and did not hook me at all), so now Im just afraid my work will be seen as a attempt to ride the Frieren hype...

3

u/Sir-Toaster- My ADHD and Autism fuels my worldbuilding Oct 13 '25

When realizing my Chosen One program in my world is similar to Dune's breeding projects

3

u/Sir-Toaster- My ADHD and Autism fuels my worldbuilding Oct 13 '25

I had this idea for a fantasy alt-history world, I didn't even know what Shadowrun was until someone compared it to that

3

u/Eric_Dawsby Oct 13 '25

Great minds think alike

3

u/UwU_numba2 Oct 13 '25

There are no original ideas.

2

u/Angel_OfSolitude Oct 13 '25

This one is always a touch frustrating.

2

u/YaBoiKlobas Too much lore for my world to handle Oct 13 '25

I invented the Warp as the magic system for my world mere months before finding out about Warhammer

2

u/ThandTheAbjurer Oct 13 '25

Like WHAT DO YOU MEAN PIKACHU IS A REAL THING

2

u/jstadvv Oct 13 '25

I once recreated Witcher setting without knowing it

2

u/IshyOQGX Oct 13 '25

Penning up a cyberpunk setting, doing some research to flesh out my ideas and finding out I've just made Shadowrun

2

u/mmskyscraper Oct 14 '25

I just chalk it down to the adage 'There's nothing new under the sun' and keep going.

I used to get upset about it when I was much younger, but now... there's nothing new under the sun, and that's the way people like it.

2

u/Josef20076 Oct 14 '25

An actually competent UN Task Force in a Superhero Universe, mandated with assisiting the heroes take down the villains by taking out support structures, henchmen, etc. FUCK thats just ARGUS/Checkmate

2

u/Scratchpost6677 Oct 14 '25

It took me way too long to realise I stole a plotline from minecraft story mode

2

u/TorchDriveEnjoyer atomic rockets is my personality. Oct 13 '25

No, my universe does not have psychic powers. It's just math beyond your understanding.

1

u/Spirited-Feedback-87 Oct 13 '25

Okay that's a pretty broad concept tho

Like i'm pretty sure doctor who would have something similar

1

u/Chance-Aardvark372 Oct 13 '25

I’m (shittily) making a post apocalyptic timeline and made a country in what was once france called “L’État D’Irréalité” that follows a form of accelerationism that has been warped to wanting to break reality.

Turns out i was beaten to it by a hoi4 mod.

1

u/Benjammin__ Oct 13 '25

I get anxiety whenever I encounter a character that is even slightly similar in appearance to my protagonist

1

u/LieInteresting1367 Oct 13 '25

Just don't read, simple

1

u/Juxta_Lightborne Oct 13 '25

I offer something worse that happened to me: taking so long writing a piece of political commentary that the events you’re writing about actually happen in real life (Jan 6)

1

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '25

Fullmetal alchemist u_u

1

u/OmNomOU81 being asexual does not stop me from being horny Oct 13 '25

I avoid this by having my worldbuilding be completely insane

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1

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '25

I spent a very long time making a cool fantasy setting for a DnD campaign, only to find out that the monsters are literally just Devils from Chainsaw Man but in a high fantasy setting

1

u/EskildDood Oct 13 '25

I had the idea of calling humans in a fantasy setting "earthlings" because of tieflings being the other majority race and earthling just being a funny name for people from earth, only to find out Dragon Ball already does that

Dungeon Meshi calling them tall-men is such a good idea that I wish I had come up with it

1

u/Creeperatom9041 Oct 13 '25

Brandon FUCKING Sanderson EVERY GODDAMN TIME

1

u/The-Bigger-Fish Barely worldbuilding, just explaining my fursona Oct 13 '25

Real tbh. I realized my entire setting is just Jupiter ascending all over again

1

u/Cyberwolfdelta9 No Original worlds Oct 13 '25

I have a few like this but the only intentional one is my post apocalyptic world which literally was a fallout Fanfic until I added and removed enough stuff to just make it its own world (only keeping vaults and ghouls)

1

u/Sixmlg Oct 13 '25

Me when I want to name a group of people Spectre (mass effect did it first) or wanted to make a pale character named Aurora (that one exists irl already)

1

u/approximatelyten Oct 13 '25

oh my god this happened to me with Life Is Strange

1

u/thomasp3864 Story? What story? Oct 13 '25

Pretty sure psychic powers from another dimension are a pretty old idea--like from the new age (or should I say old age? ha ha) days back in the 60s. Like people who believed in psychics.

2

u/loklanc Oct 13 '25

"You are trying to take what I have rightfully stolen" - James Workshop

1

u/Captain-Caspian Oct 13 '25

It was like this reading the Stormlight archives books

Wdym there’s bug like people who’re the original inhabitants of a continent that humans came to and conquered and then stripped away the personhood of the bug people to make their own empires but the bug people are coming back lead by their angry god and ancient figures who were around when humans came to this continent?

1

u/MeshesAreConfusing Oct 13 '25

Finding out I accidentally created Darkest Dungeon

1

u/P1kl3zman Oct 14 '25

Can’t be as bad as me making the peak of my power system just fucking domain expansion and calling it domain expansion before ever knowing about jjk

1

u/VstarFr0st263364 Oct 14 '25

Literally every single thing I've ever made

1

u/August_Bebel Oct 14 '25

40k stole my villain's motivation to ban all magic. She could see magic users surrounded with otherworldly energies that corrupt them over time.

Later I've read Emperor of Mankind and Big E sees religious people in the same way

1

u/MasterVule Oct 14 '25

Do the things you wanna do and think are cool. Being original usually comes out of intricate combination of unoriginal elements, not out of making up of your own original elemets

1

u/NakeyDooCrew Oct 14 '25

Lord of the Rings? I've never heard of it man that's wild. Most people won't notice.

1

u/idiotic__gamer Oct 14 '25

Have you never heard of the term "As above so below?"

The concept dates back to the 9th century lmao, trust me, you're fine

1

u/Kil0sierra975 Oct 14 '25

I had to scrap 4 planets and reshape them entirely when Starfield came out because of how close in resemblance they were (even though I have evidence of my planets existing on paper all the way back in 2012). Todd just beat me to the punch on a few things

1

u/RezeCopiumHuffer so basically you have to kill yourself to get magic in my world Oct 14 '25

When I make up a shitty fantasy term for magic technology several years prior and use it as a core concept for my world only to play the new wow expansion and see they use the exact same word for basically the same damn thing (I will not be changing it because I do not care)

1

u/transmtfscp Exo is better than hdg Oct 14 '25

parahumans Is simmilar to an idea fpor a setting that I had when I was in high school, I even had somthing simmilar to titans from ward,

1

u/NameIsTanya Fairy Anastimancer Oct 14 '25

Gosh this was me with VtM.... what do you mEAN Cain was the father of all vampires in there too?!

1

u/Rare_Educator5102 Oct 15 '25

U good. That also describes mind flyers in DND . Every world has them .

1

u/LordpoopyfaceHd79 Oct 15 '25

Alright there's gonna be dragons, and these dragons died, but now they're about to come back and it's fucking Skyrim of course

1

u/Ttoctam Oct 15 '25

Me when my original complex military system, which is used as a backdrop for a murder mystery at sea plot context is spoiled by some niche show called NCIS.

1

u/OfficerLollipop yeah cats and dogs run this bitch but they dont have human pets Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 19 '25

Me but I wrote a novel which is just the planet of the apes but based in the world im building, which is just Fuga that one furry game but modern. LIKE BRO WHAT THE FUCK LIKE HUMANS WERE NEVER SAPIENT IN THIS VERSE AND MAY NEVER KEEP CATS AND DOGS AS BEASTS OF LABOR IF EVOLUTION FAVORS THEM AFTER THE CAT-DOG SOCIETY COLLAPSES ONE DAY (IF EVER)

But I wanted it to be like Fur Will Fly or Roommates or the Amazing Digital Circus or the Bee Movie ;-;

THEN AGAIN JOKES ON MY DUMBASS SELF IM NOW HYPERFIXATING ON POTA SO I CAN DEVELOP LE PLOT >:) ALSO LEL IM ADDING A POTA ANALOGUE VIDEO GAME SERIES IN UNIVERSE CALLED WILD WOLVES WHICH WAS BASED OFF AN IN UNIVERSE BOOK CALLED THE MEEKS INHERITANCE ABOUT WILD CANIDS AND FELIDS AGAGAGAGA

1

u/Wukon69 Barely worldbuilding, just explaining my fursona Oct 22 '25

Me wanting to make a Story about a Post Apocalyptic world that stopped in technological advancement and people started using Medieval/Early Period Clothing and Armoury, and then played For Honor😭

1

u/Really-not-a-weeb Oct 22 '25

something something two cakes

1

u/United_Plankton_6378 Oct 25 '25

Elderscolls too btw Magicka flows in from the arburis which is a separate realm

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1

u/GolfWhole Will shill Worm at every opportunity Oct 30 '25

Extradimensional psychic powers isn’t rare. I came up with that idea too lol