Shantae: A New Genie is a completed fanfic created by Seantae2425 that acts as a novelization for the Shantae video game series while adding its own twists. It can be found here:
The first chapter can be found here.
A sequel exists called Shantae: The Ties That Bind.
Shantae: A New Genie contains examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance:
- Harmony, a character who makes her first appearance in the fifth game in the series, Seven Sirens, appears as early as chapter 3, which covers the first game.
- Chef Girl, now named Emma, and Wobble Bell turn up in chapter 5, which is covering the first game, despite not appearing until Risky's Revenge.
- Shantae's Harpy transformation turns up in the boss fight in the Dribble Fountain when in game, it doesn't appear until the final dungeon.
- Holly Lingerbean and Wilbur originally made their first appearances in the fourth game in the series, Half-Genie Hero, whereas here they first appear in chapter 6 in a flashback, which covers the first game.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Both played straight and downplayed with Bolo. He is still dumb like he is in the games, but now he has enough enough common sense not to give away the location of the Elemental Stone to Risky.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Played straight with Sky, who is much nicer here in comparison with her game counterpart.
- Adaptation Expansion:
- The Elemental Stones in the first game are given more significance here than in the original story as rather then just being the MacGuffins needed for Risky's plot in the first game, they are also seals keeping the voice sealed.
- The pasts of half-Genies' mothers have rarely been explored in the games. Chapter 6 has a flashback showing how Harmony's parents came to meet.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: The voice that talks to Harmony is the one who teaches her how to use her magic, and Harmony is the one to teach Shantae how to use her magic rather than the nameless Genies from the first game.
- Born as an Adult: The voice in chapter 6 mentions that Genies are normally born as adults, skipping past childhood.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Even when she is being crushed by a dogpile of Tinkerbats, Shantae can't help but ask Risky if she's okay when the latter is screaming at the voice in her head. She also makes sure to stop and comfort Bolo after being scared by the voice.
- The Dreaded: The voice that debuts in the first chapter. Every character it talks to is left terrified by its presence. The only exceptions for this are Risky, who has gotten used to the voice, although it still occasionally scares her, and Harmony.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Risky does not approve of the voice terrifying Shantae and Bolo, the former seemingly just for kicks.
- Healing Potion: A staple of the franchise. In chapter 4, Bolo introduces them to Shantae, who at first rejects the potion due to believing the people selling it are scammers. She is also not convinced that it will work when Bolo insists that it does since he got a discount for three of them, which is a reference to the game's mechanics. Shantae is only convinced when she tries the potion and much to her surprise, her injuries are healed.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite Bolo having the common sense to not give the location of Dribble Stone to Risky, the voice just terrifies him into giving it up.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Shantae doesn't really like it when Bolo crushes on every girl he sees, but admits that his crush on Harmony is better than his one on Risky because the former is not evil, nor is she as crazy.
- Named by the Adaptation:
- Chef Girl, while never given an explicit name in the games, is now named Emma.
- Shantae's mother is named Ana.
- Harmony's mother is named Serena.
- The Sirens have their own individual names while Siren is merely a title.
- Lobster Siren is named Nora.
- Coral Siren is named Molly.
- Empress Siren is named Iris.
- Pet the Dog:
- While she doesn't say anything out loud, Risky does genuinely feel bad for Bolo when he mentions that she's the only girl that didn't try to slap him.
- Harmony isn't bothered by Bolo's attraction to her and is actually flattered by it.
- The voice/Jack is shown to generally treat Harmony better than anyone else around him.
- Rip Van Winkle: Thanks to the voice, Harmony was forced into one of these. The amount of time was not stated, but the voice states he put her to sleep as a child and she is now in her early twenties.
- Shout-Out: When Mimic is explaining the elemental stones to her, Shantae says that the Dribble Stone controlling water reminds her of a cartoon she liked as a kid.
- Single Specimen Species: Played with. Shantae believes that she is the only half-Genie until she meets Harmony.
- Stepford Smiler: Harmony notices that Emma's smile appears to be insincere when the latter looks away from her, contrasting the latter's previous eagerness she had displayed.
- Sweet Tooth: Shantae and Harmony both have this, with the former preferring cinnamon rolls and the latter liking donuts. The voice explains in Chapter 5 that sugar is a natural part of the Genies' diet and that it rejuvenates their magic.
- Trademark Favorite Food: While never having a stated favorite food in the games, here Shantae is shown to love cinnamon rolls. Harmony is also given a favorite food with it being donuts.
- Vague Age: Averted several times.
- In the original games, Shantae's age is never defined, but she is presumed to be a young adult. In this story, she starts out at 18, having celebrated her birthday a few days prior to the first chapter. This correlates to an addition in the story, where the job she aspires for, Scuttle Town's guardian, has an age requirement of 18.
- Bolo and Sky also avert this, as Mimic states that both are a year older then Shantae, putting them at 19.
- Rottytops is stated to be immortal here, so she stops physically aging at the age she died, 19, but is mentally 20 at the beginning of the story.
- Chef Girl, or Emma as she's named in this version, was never given a specific age in the games, with the only hint to that being her mentioning getting rejected out of a cooking college in Half-Genie Hero. Here, she starts out at 17.
- Harmony's age in canon is only regarded as being the oldest among the half-Genies. Here, she is 6 years older than the Lobser Siren Nora, who is 15, thus making Harmony 21.
- Walking Spoiler: Both the voice and Harmony are major spoilers for the story.
