As some of you know, I've been working on this idea for ages. I've had many ideas over the years, but this one stands out for me.

I honestly don't know if I'd make a good writer, but I've always had that creativity in me, even from a very young age. There's a home movie of me at around 3 or 4 years old reading the first book that I "wrote" (it was mostly scribbles and some drawings) called "The Dude and the Worm."

Later on in life, I would write now and then. Just simple little stories that I'd get ideas for randomly, ranging from Nascar, to a space adventure that was inspired by Mario Party 2's Space Land. More recently, my ideas are getting bigger and bigger (and also more anime-like ). Even these had some range to what they were, from Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!-like adventures, to darker, more serious, manga stories (like Iris the Assassin (I think I shared a few drawings I had of her) and The Four Guardians). Iris I may just have as a character in The Four Guardians since I like this idea better.

Now, The Four Guardians....oh boy. This story has evolved soooo much.

It originally was going to be something a bit different with a name like The Twelve Guardians (can't actually remember the original name I had for it), and it was going to be a story about 12 people who had the powers of the 12 signs of the Chinese Zodiac fighting the forces of evil and stuff. There was prophecies and whatnot foretelling of dark times and blah blah, and it was their duty to make sure the world was safe from these dark times and blah blah.

I eventually scrapped this idea because I felt it was too generic. But then, while doing some research on different Chinese and Japanese myths, I came across The Four Symbols. Thus, I brought back the old idea and reduced the number of main characters from 12 (actually, it was more like 13 or 14 since I had like a old guy and a dragon as mentors at one point for that story ) to 4.

This is where more of the ideas I've had recently started coming into play, from the main characters (I'll get to them later), to different plot ideas, and even how many books this story would take to tell (or if I should turn it into something else, like a video game or web comic).

The basic plot has always been the same: Good guys fight bad guys. Who the good guys were hasn't been too hard, but the bad guys....

I've bounced back and forth from two main ideas: It's either demons and monsters, or it's bad people trying to rule the world. Sometimes, both would combine, and it would be a bad guy unleashing hell on the world in order to rule it (in fact, that may have been the original plot for the twelve guardians). I like this theme, but trying to actually create characters for it....

One idea I had was the seven deadly sins, like Fullmetal Alchemist had, and I really did like that idea, but I felt like I was just copying FMA, so I kind of drifted away from that. I may go back to it though, especially after talking with Nopon earlier in OJ.

Even so, if the seven deadly sins are a thing, would the be the main problem? Probably not. I feel like they'd be minions for a bigger baddie, like the devil himself.

So yeah, I may just go with that again, but what starts all this? Is it just something that the prophets foretold (like the end of time or something like that)? Or is it just some madman who wants power and unleashes hell on the world? Bouncing back and forth and combining ideas...I can never make up my mind.

However, my more recent ideas for this story kind of drift away from the more demonic stuff. It's been more of a "world is at war and blah blah blah happens" kind of thing. If you read my prologue in the NaNo thread, that pretty much sums up the current ideas, except the academy thing was a bit more recent.

Originally, I was going to make the main characters be unique and have them just be "blessed by the gods" with their powers to save the world (even thought about having them possessed by the spirits of the four symbols (link I shared earlier), or something like that), but then I thought maybe I should have it like Avatar (The Last Airbender, not the blue alien one ) and other people have these powers too... So many ideas, all seemingly inspired by other sources...

Rolling with the "everyone can have powers" idea, I thought maybe I should make a "school-like" scenario where other people could come to become guardians or whatever. After going over it multiple times, and thinking I should go with this, I felt like I was basically copying RWBY in so many ways...

There's so many things in all these ideas that I like, but so many things that don't work out...

One thing is for sure though: There is 4 main characters.

These 4 characters are the 4 guardians. There's one from each direction with the powers corresponding to that direction. They travel the world helping people with their powers and, along the way, fight demons/wars/whatever the actual plot has in it.

My original designs for my main characters came from an anime character creator. I worked with them a bit, tried making them a bit better in another character maker, and....well, I liked them a little, but there were a few issues I had with them.

More recently, however, I was inspired to base them off of Pit Stop members (I can also put everyone else as characters in this story if it ever gets going). It honestly wouldn't be that hard given that I know you all fairly well and know what most of you look like, but if anyone doesn't like this, it's no big deal and I can go back to making original designs.

I'll have to share their designs and more thoughts on them tomorrow. Right now...I gotta get some sleep...all this brainstorming is making my head spin...