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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Odd. I didn't think we [[MST|sporked]] stories from Fiction Press. I mean, this must be from Fiction Press if it's an original story, and it must be an original story, because it has nothing in common with any existing fandom I've heard or seen. Weird coincidence how two of the characters have names from the [[Harry Potter]] series."''
|'''beacon80''', [http://pottersues.livejournal.com/572600.html pottersues]}}
It's very tempting to some newer writers to create an original story, insert known characters into it, and pass it off as some kind of [[Alternate Universe Fic]]. Most of the premise is dropped, and ''if'' the characters still act in a familiar way, all we have is their names to prove who they are.
When not seen as outright gutting, this is a different and often less accepted beast than [[Genre Shift]], resulting in a comedy [[Recycled in Space|suddenly set]] in a [[Sci Fi]] setting, or [[High School AU|an action series having its character shoved into a high school drama.]] The latter is pretty common, especially in [[Shipping]] [[Fanfic]], and almost universally bad. Also a way writers get the [[Non-Action Guy]] together with the [[Action Girl]]. Those pesky powers and confidence that comes with them interfere.
See also [[Fusion Fic]], [[Film Fic]]▼
{{examples}}▼
▲See also [[Fusion Fic]], [[Film Fic]], [[Folgers Crossover]].
▲{{examples}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Writer [[Mark Millar]] has been accused of doing this with [[Marvel Civil War]] given the [[Alternate Character Interpretation]] of several of the characters involved ([[Iron Man]] as fascistic, [[Captain America (comics)|Captain America]] as being morally wrong, etc).
* It was a common occurrence in American comics to alter comic scripts (and sometimes already drawn stories!) made for one series to another one when needed; one example was a [[John Carter of Mars]] story converted into a [[Star Wars]] fill-in issue by [[Marvel Comics]].
** Similarly, some of the ''[[Conan]]'' stories written by [[Roy Thomas]] for [[Marvel Comics]] were adaptations of novels by [[Gardner Fox]] about ''his'' barbarian hero, [[Kothar]]. Change a few proper nouns, and presto!
** This goes back to the Golden Age, actually. There is evidence that some stories were hastily rewritten to accommodate various in-house situations (at least one very late Golden Age Green Lantern story has him so OOC that it must have originally been a Batman story, and at least two All-Star adventures were rewritten with cast changes).
== [[Fan
* The [[Rouge Angles of Satin|Grammatically-broken]] (and [[Missing Episode|lost]]) ''Warhammer 40000 Trouble'', when the author suddenly
* One example is the ''[http://www.lop.shoesforindustry.net/ Lust Over Pendle]'' series of ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfiction by A.J. Hall, a series of suspense/mystery novels using [[Draco in Leather Pants|Draco]] and Neville as a [[Slash Fic|couple]] solving mysteries, effectively turning them into the [[Hardy Boys]]. Magic is hardly mentioned at all, everyone constantly interacts with [[Muggles]] and one climax features a "magical" nuclear device that doesn't seem very magical at all. In other words, if you changed the name and dropped what little premise of magic actually included in the story, you'd have a pretty good original novel. With the premise sticking halfway to it, readers keep on forgetting that this is supposed to be a [[Harry Potter]] fanfiction even ''with'' the names used.
** A lot of ''Harry Potter'' fanfiction goes even further, keeping the characters' names, [[Out of Character|changing their personalities]] and setting it in the Muggle world. Either that or a generic fantasy/medieval world with no mention of Hogwarts or wizards ([http://pottersues.livejournal.com/572600.html Hermione is a water nymph who loves Prince Draco!]).
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* In ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' fandom, the fics that fall into this trope the most frequently are...''not'' the human AU ones, the majority of which actually at least try to keep the characters IC and their relationships reminiscent of their canon ones, even in [[High School AU]] (which was actually originated by ''the author himself''!). No, the fics that most often invoke this trope are the ones that ''do'' keep the "characters are [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]s of nations" premise...but completely rewrite the characters' personalities (often [[Ron the Death Eater|for the worse]]) for the sake of "historical accuracy" (i.e. "fitting the fanwriters' own ideas about history, even if they directly contradict established APH canon" or even "using [[Historical Villain Upgrade|'history']] as an excuse to make a character [[Die for Our Ship]] or become [[Ron the Death Eater]]"), to the point where the characters are essentially national [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]s that were created by someone other than the series' author.
** The most prominent examples of this are the [[Dark Fic]]s ''[[All He Ever Wanted]]'' and ''The Chosen End''. It isn't even subjective opinion; the [[Word of God|authors themselves]] have admitted that their fics' characterizations don't match up with the canon ones. In AHEW's case, one of the authors later admitted that they began writing the fic when they didn't have a good grasp on the Hetalia characters and that their characterization of Prussia in particular turned out to not match up with Hetalia canon at all. In TCE's case, the author went on record saying that she wrote the characters differently from canon and even once outright said that she would [[Die for Our Ship|hate England solely because he was in love with America (and hence a threat to Russia/America, the fic's main pairing)]] if she wasn't able to [[Ship Mates|pair him out of the way with France]]...and even with ''that'' modifier, you can still sense her dislike of England at various parts of the fic.
* There are several AU ''[[Toy Story (franchise)|Toy Story]]'' fics that depict the toys as humans. Quite a few of them feature these characters as ''[[High School AU|high school students.]]''
* While ''[[The Return (fanfic)|The Return]]'' is very well written and interesting, it has almost nothing whatsoever to do with its ostensible sources, ''[[Ranma ½]]'' and ''[[Sailor Moon]]''. The Ranma elements suffer from changed setting and skillset, and all the characters' personalities being utterly destroyed and transformed into something [[Blue and Orange Morality|other]] ''in-story'', while the Sailor Moon characters come out with personalities and abilities more or less intact, but story tone so dark as to make it almost unrecognizable.
* Similarly, ''[[On a Clear Day You Can See Forever]]'' is a great story, but Ranma's been drastically changed by having almost literally been through hell, and the 'parallel' universe that the [[Sailor Moon]] characters are from is a dark [[Urban Fantasy]] complete with gods, mages, vampires, werewolves, and airships, with only lingering archetypal resemblances to the source material.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII
* The ''[[Homestuck]]'' fandom has spun off all sorts of bizarre [[
* The entire 'uberfic' movement within the ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess|Xena]]'' fandom quite often (but not always) even did away with the ''names'' of the canon characters, and simply wrote original fiction with characters who archetypally resembled Xena and Gabrielle. Many of these stories ''did'' go on to be published as small-press fiction. If you encounter a lesbian romance that features a strong dark-haired woman with a painful past and an innocent blonde who believes in helping others and has had an unsatisfying relationship with an ex-or-dead husband, you've probably found an Uber.
* The ''[[Pokémon]]'' fanfic author [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1706782/StaraptorEmpoleon StaraptorEmpoleon] is infamous for taking this trope to its logical extreme: it's not uncommon for her to change everything about the ''[[Pokémon]]'' characters often up to and including their ''names'' such that it often seems like the only thing they have that's connected to their canon selves is their star pokemon (if that)!
* ''[[Astral Journey: It's Complicated]]'' takes [[Spice Girls]], [[Mariah Carey]], [[Brandy Norwood]], [[Jewel]], and even [[Santa Claus]] into football (soccer) players, sports medicine, and even ESP.
* ''[http://ten.waxwolf.com/ Ten]'' by "Richard E" is allegedly a ''[[Ranma ½]]'' fic, but the only things it has in common with ''Ranma'' are the names of the characters. And everything about them is radically different from who they are in the source -- for instance, direction-challenged, super-strong human tank Ryoga as a crippled, intellectual scientist. Huh?
* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/67364/1/ Rendezvous With Fate]'' by iCe, also a ''[[Ranma ½]]'' fic. Here Akane is the twenty-something widow of Ryoga; [[Mental Time Travel|her mind/soul is sent back in time]] to [[Jidai Geki|Edo-period Japan]], where she finds herself occupying the body of Kodachi, estranged wife of Ranma Saotome, a high-ranking warrior in the service of Happosai and twin brother of Nabiki... It's an extraordinary story, well-written and engrossing, but once again, the characters and settings are so vastly divorced from ''Ranma ½'' canon that there is no real reason for it to be a ''Ranma'' fanfic.
* The nonnies in the [https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org failfandomanon] anon meme have the [[Fun with Acronyms|acronym]] ATG, standing for "Any Two Guys", for slashfic where the characterization is so generic and so removed from how the canon characters act that it could literally be about ''any'' two guys. A thread that comes out with certain regularity is "Guess the ATG", where somebody posts a fragment of one such a fic and the other nonnies have to guess who the original characters were.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Arguably, [[Douglas Adams]] did this in reverse a couple of times. ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Life, The Universe And Everything|Life The Universe And Everything]]'' uses plot elements from an aborted ''[[Doctor Who]]'' movie script ("Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen"), while ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]'' reuses elements from the ''Doctor Who'' story "Shada", which was never completed due to industrial action, and steals even more elements from "City of Death", which ''was'' made and aired. If you know this, you can see how the characters correspond: Slartibartfast and Trillian carry out plot segments meant for the Doctor and Sarah Jane, while ''Dirk Gently'' features a "Regius Professor of Chronology" instead of a Time Lord, who shares the Doctorlike role with Dirk.
== [[
* Some versions of [[Charlie and the Chocolate Parody]].
* The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode ''Sub Rosa'' was initially pitched by a freelance writer, later developed into a story credit by Jeri Taylor and a teleplay by Brannon Braga. Many felt the final product was basically the Anne Rice novel ''The Witching Hour'' - only with Doctor Crusher and a [[Techno Babble]] "ghost." [[Word of God|Taylor]] denied Rice's novel as the inspiration, instead saying they were simply doing an homage to ''The Innocents'' movie and utilizing various gothic tropes.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Fanfic Tropes]]
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