#and the stasis he tends to get into between trilogies

[spectrum-color]

I saw Fitz’s time in Withywoods being described as reading like a dream and it really struck me how accurate that is. Fitz comes off as pretty checked out in those chapters; despite having all of his memories and feelings back it’s like he’s lost a piece of himself and isn’t fully present. It ends up functioning like a cabin 2.0 and it was a really interesting narrative choice.

[silver-wield]

I'll admit, I don't tend to keep track of the dev teams for the various FFs beyond 7's so finding out Toriyama was responsible for 13 explains why I hate it so much lmao.

Ffxiii is all his. His scenario, his script, his characters but the designs are Nomura's.

But in a nutshell he ripped off ffvii.

Lightning is Soldier Cloud and by LR comes complete with a "real self" she locked away to be strong enough to protect her precious baby sister who's her entire world and she goes into crystal stasis for and kills god for blah blah blah and if you feel there's echoes of Cloud's promise to protect Tifa in there you'd be right on the money because Toriyama is a rip off artist.

Snow is also Cloud, but he's also Zack. He's the real boi all simpy for his one true love, but also super positive until he loses her for the millionth time and becomes emo Cloud because AC Cloud wasn't depressed because he was dying nauuuu it was all because he was emo and in LR so is snow. He's the most emo donchakno. Most angsty. Even more angsty than Soldier Cloud--I mean Lightning.

Serah. If you can't guess who she's based on going off the multiple death/revivals, being a super speshul priestess who sees alt timelines for no reason--literally no reason was ever given for why she's like Yuel--the excessive use of pink, being some uwu damsel in distress etc etc then I can't help you. 13-2 is the biggest flop of the trilogy because he tried to make his Aerith puppet the MC and she was too fucking dull and annoying to carry the plot.

Sahz is your angry dad Barret. Vanille is Yuffie. Fang is your tough secretive Vincent, and Hope the leftovers of Aerith that didn't fit into Serah, so the mother being unfairly gunned down, the dad being some distant educator type etc etc.

What about Tifa? I hear y'all ask.

Tifa and the Avalanche derps are also in the game, not that you'd realise. Lebreau is Snow's childhood friend who runs the local bar and looks after him and the trio who assist Snow on his lil adventures.

Top left is Lebreau and yeah, she looks a bit like Tifa. Toriyama was so salty he made her an NPC, which shows his contempt for her, and it's why Tifa's still getting shitty costumes and undermined in Ever Crisis.

Toriyama will never let go of the fact Tifa's Cloud's lover over the girl he wrote. And if y'all wanna know why Aerith is so toxic it's because Toriyama loves love triangles.

Look what he did to Yuel, Caius and Noel. Was there any need for that weird shit? Yuel's a child. Caius is an old man in his 40's and Noel is a teenager, but sure, let's have some weird ass shit happening between them all because that's good gaming 😬

Toriyama should never be allowed to head up a scenario team.

[jostenneil]

how do you feel about people shipping toxic ships?

i think this depends on a few things. primarily, that fandom tends to conflate the terms abusive and toxic with each other. . . a lot. toxicity is inherent to abuse, but the reverse of that isn’t necessarily true. you can have a toxic relationship with someone without it being abusive, esp since, to me at least, abuse specifically arises from a person taking advantage of a power dynamic within what should normally be a mutually supportive relationship to deliberately hurt the other person. an example of an abusive relationship to me would be (from the grisha trilogy) alina and the darkling, who uses alina’s trust and sympathy towards him to manipulate, isolate, and threaten her to the point that it emotionally debilitates her and threatens her other relationships with people. there’s a clear power dynamic being manipulated there to the advantage of one person and to the harm of the other

a toxic relationship to me can involve intentional behavior but it can also involve a lot of unintentional behavior, esp that driven by trauma or a non-ideal upbringing, and then i also think a lot of toxic relationships are simply. . . between people you would never expect to get along to begin with. a lot of enemies to lovers ships have their initial basis in toxicity bc the people involved are enemies. they’re not supposed to actually like each other (or value each other’s lives) in the beginning, and usually if you write such a dynamic well, then certain political events and revelations eventually help those stances evolve to where the toxicity is addressed and overcome (and the same process can apply to rivals to lovers situations as well, albeit along softer parameters usually since politics aren’t necessarily involved). i personally like to see toxicity explored if writers give it direction. toxicity is off-putting if it’s static bc then it serves no other purpose than to scream in big neon letters “omg these ppl are sooo toxic it’s so sexy blah blah blah” and that’s incredibly boring to me. what well explored toxicity does is analyze how the people involved are impacted by that toxicity. whether being toxic invokes remorse, isolation, misery, etc. that’s what interests me

sometimes, it goes the ideal way, wherein characters realize their toxicity only hurts themselves and they express a genuine desire to change and grow. sasuke (from naruto) is a fairly obv example of that phenomenon to me, in that, yes, he’s absolutely right to be distrustful of the villages’ ulterior motives and to want justice for his family’s massacre, but driving away the people he loves and who love him doesn’t ultimately help him in attaining that goal or vision. post canon naruto is an absolute mess, but i think most people would agree on the general premise that in an ideal world, sasuke opening himself back up to naruto, sakura, and kakashi could have helped him enact change bc he would have a support system behind him, and he wouldn’t have to further isolate himself or render himself so prone to manipulation via trauma if he was able to rely on people he genuinely cared about

other times, toxicity can go the tragic route. the characters may be aware of their faults but fail to figure out how to fix them, or they may not be aware of those faults at all and continue to indulge in them until their ultimate downfall. as miserable as that sounds, i think there’s a value in narratives like that, too. it teaches you a lesson, and it can also garner sympathy from you as a reader in some circumstances bc you may realize that some toxic behaviors of a given character were inadvertent and they didn’t have the resources or environment that would make them conducive to change. that’s like the epitome of wuthering heights to me. most of the characters are absolutely terrible to each other, but there’s something to learn from that, and with heathcliff esp, you see that a lot of his toxicity stems from trauma and abuse that he didn’t really have the emotional resources to ever recover from, so you can’t entirely render him into a villain bc it’s a flat reading

toxicity can also exhibit a blend of the two above scenarios. wuthering heights also feels like a good example of that to me. heathcliff and catherine’s ends are tragic, but hareton and cathy junior’s ends are far more hopeful in comparison. some people don’t learn, but others do, and it’s a good insight into the nature of human dichotomy as well as cycles of toxicity and abuse within context of class and race relations

so ultimately, i think i personally find a lot of worth in exploration of toxic relationships bc it can really get to the heart of analysis of the human psyche and how real world relationships are often non ideal. but that being said, how i feel about the phenomenon as it goes in fandom is. . . tricky. i’ll be straight and say i don’t think most people are sensible enough to really get to the root of what makes toxic relationships interesting and are instead content to rely on toxic stasis bc it’s easily marketable and readily appealing. you don’t have to deal with the real questions contending with toxicity demands of you if you don’t care, and that’s unfortunately a mindset that pervades fandom at large

[silencedminstrel]

The Revenant Collectives Trilogy Part 2 - The Grave Of Smiles

“A nearly empty pockets of galactic space in the heliopause region just outside the Outer Rim. A tranquil oasis in the middle of hellish gravity wells and evaporating black holes created from ancient galactic collisions. A place so hostile it never appeared on any galactic map! This is the Grave Of Smiles. A refuge for the downtrodden, the hopeless the helpless! Where those the galaxy deemed personae-non-grata but didn't want to end it all yet would find a reason to live, to get back on their feet or to get back at the galaxy that mistreated them, getting even before moving on...

The place where the notorious pirate organization the Revenant Collectives came to call home! Originally intended to be prospected for future premium quality crystal mining (spurned by numerous rumors claiming it to be littered with valuable trans-warp crystals namely Cryxillium, Terkadium and Encomium) a fledgling group of a thousand trained miners working for the Synod owned multinational corporation was sent to establish a base of operation over two hundred years ago. That group was never heard from again! From reports made by the Watchers it was confirmed that the region has more gravity wells and dying black holes than anticipated, making it almost impossible to set up business or even to explore, hence the plan was abandoned and that deep space tragedy was conveniently forgotten! Alas several souls did survive that unimaginable cosmic doom… For it would seem one of the fifteen doomed mining ships made it out of the cosmic chaos and crash landed onto a nearby asteroid; carrying over a hundred hardy souls that made it their home for several years, set up a nice outpost while harboring hopes that one day their employers would send up a ship to rescue them! There they continued with their intended work, amassed tons of cosmic wealth until one by one they painfully succumbed to starvation and madness! And among them was a seemingly human being with super intelligence and strange blue eyes that glow in the dark. A fellow miner who was also in charge of the ship's communication, cartography and deep space navigation.

A man by the name of Proscotra "Patrick" Escula. Patrick Escula was the son of a Pibian Union Space Explorer Socotra Escula and his human partner Veronica Everly. Socotra was sentenced to death for mating outside his species but got a stay of execution due to his wife's dying wish was to have the government spare her husband, since it was compulsory for them to grant a dying mother in labor anything she wished for. Thus upon her death, Socotra received a lifetime of house arrest, ending his dream for good! Albeit Patrick grew up under the tender loving care of his father, he was not allowed to mingle with society well until adulthood, when he was forced to choose either a house arrest or to leave the planet forever! He reluctantly chose the latter, left his poor father alone for the wide open galaxy and was not allowed back even to tend to his father's funeral over a century later... Realizing earlier on his "special" status would get him nowhere or even killed in the Galactic Union, he went on and pledged his allegiance to its governing rival the Synod, where his knack for cosmic mineralogy and deep space cartography earned him a top spot in the renowned "Decorum-58," the only human owned mining corporation granted numerous privileges by both galactic governments, where he cut his teeth alongside hundreds of other miners but shunned the presence of other Pibians, preferring the company of humans though he retains his father's language, culture and religion, as getting even with his father's race was never far from his mind! Then one day he and hundreds of others received a news from their employers: a chance to strike it rich! The mining expedition of fifteen registered industrial dreadnoughts left with much fanfare from the Synod Capitol, though each miner knew the risks involved were not exactly worth the price they paid, (cosmic mining is both dirty and dangerous) all agreed their hard-earned Credits would invariably redeem their pride and worth! But as far as the young human/Pibian hybrid was concerned, he merely wished to earn enough Credits to allow him to get back to his homeworld as a wealthy individual or at least, gain a citizenship, never knowing this coming journey would forever deter him from ever realizing it! When just hours after coming out of the trans-warp portal the entire expedition suddenly became a mere plaything for whatever forces at work in that part of the galaxy... Waking up from stasis to find his ship aground, no contact with the rest of the fleet and far away from help, this is where he would encounter both the best and the worst of humanity during those fateful seven years, and also the fact a lot of his peers actually looked up to him, as the hundred-strong surviving miners made a place for themselves as if things went on according to plan. Even so optimism never put food on the table! As days became months, the colony broke down via infighting and starvation, when hope finally failed even the most logical would turn to animals! Patrick sadly departed on board the only working shuttle as the remaining survivors clawed each other to death, vowing to return to give them a proper burial. As the stars in the sky have it Patrick found himself out of the turmoil by the skin of his teeth, only to discover that fateful tragedy had been largely forgotten, that his survival would only be conveniently downplayed by the Synod! This forced him to live off the grid for decades, wandering from system to system doing oddjobs from both clean and honest to dirty and cheap, descending deeper and deeper into the galactic underworld right up to that major turning point in his life! When during one of his sojourns he encountered a racial riot between humans and cyborgs that ended with one of the latter snapped, screamed through his glowing eyes then proceeded to blew up the heads of all the racists from where they stood, drenched the street with blood before passing out. Patrick knew it there and then that he has to save that unconscious teenager (and risked his name being etched onto the galactic criminal records). So he snatched that hapless kid away amidst the arriving city sentinels, healed him via a skill he got from his father and forged a close friendship with that wayward, drug addicted misfit called Rembrandt Roswell, the last of the psychic cyborgs from New Hesperion on the run from a militia of his own kind—The Peacekeepers! From there the two would go on to have several outlandish adventures together, among them being run-ins with the monastic Order of the Blessed, the shady Dark Brotherhood of the Mind-Benders, mysterious band of refugees called the Sacred Survivors and of course that dark consortium of ancient, galaxy-hopping menace the Shudwa Dumanta Legion...”

[fanfictionlive]

On self-insert original characters

Hi everyone!

I've been lurking about here for awhile and recently decided I should actually post around. I thought I'd comment on self-inserts, since they've been a somewhat thorny topic in my experience.

In short, I've encountered some hostility to self-insert original characters. I've seen people say they'll literally refuse to read something starring one. I find this disheartening because the vast majority of what I've written is video game fanfiction, and whenever I play a game, I try to self-insert as a way of increasing immersion. This means that if I have an extended headcanon on a game, it's going to include myself in some way. So I employ self-inserts a lot.

I asked why these people hate self-inserts so much. A few common responses arose, which I've tried to pay attention to in constructing my OCs. I'll list out some advice people have given me on self-insert OCs - maybe it'll help someone. I'd also love to hear everyone else's opinions on the matter.

​

Make sure your OC has a narrative purpose

One common complaint I saw has to do with people writing self-inserts mainly just to fulfill their own fantasies. That's not a problem per se, especially if you're just writing for fun, but from a narrative perspective, the characters should all fulfill some role, original or not.

To use something I wrote as an example: in Resident Evil, the canon protagonists are all versed in combat and the games see them fight through biohazard outbreaks. I wrote a character without any fighting ability, emphasizing the "survival" part of "survival horror." The OC thus serves some purpose in the plot that the canon characters wouldn't. As a side-note, given I'm just a regular civilian in real life, this OC being a self-insert allows me to explore this concept even more deeply.

On that note, think about the canon cast and how your OC would be different from them. Consider a Marvel fanfiction where your character is a super-soldier from WWII who wakes up in the modern day from stasis. Well...Marvel has 2 prominent characters that already fit that bill, so it'll be difficult to come up with something for your character to do that Captain America or Winter Soldier wouldn't already do. I mean, it's possible - but you should give it some concerted thought.

​

Pay attention to romantic pairings between OCs and canon characters

Here's a big one. One of those author fantasies from above has to do with romancing a canon character. Again, that's fine, but from a narrative perspective, that romance shouldn't define the OC 100%. Doing so brings up 2 big problems.

One: if the OC is a main character, your story is now going to be primarily a romance. You're just telling the story of a character romancing someone else, after all. This is a problem if the fandom you're writing in isn't primarily a romance. Let's use the Star Wars original trilogy as an example: Han and Leia have a romance, and the movies do spend time on it, but that's a subplot. There're all these other, bigger things going on, like the rebels fighting the Empire, or the Jedi fighting the Sith, or the redemption of the fallen. A Star Wars fan enjoys seeing these sorts of things, so he may find a pure romance story lukewarm.

Two: characters completely defined by romance to other characters tend to be one-dimensional and this goes for both OCs and canon characters. If your OC is a self-insert, you're actually short-changing yourself. Real-life you is going to have experiences and philosophies and motivations and all the other things that make people...people. See how to incorporate that kind of 3-dimensionality into your OC.

Here's what you should generally avoid: don't break up a canon pairing just so your OC can move in. If there's one canon ship that really bothers me, it's Matt/Sora from Digimon. That said, I'd still consider it bad form if I wrote something where Matt gets unceremoniously axed in the first chapter and my OC swoops in to romance Sora.

​

Don't let your OC overshadow the canon cast

I don't like the term "Mary Sue" because it gets thrown around very frequently and can be pretty subjective, but one hallmark of a Mary Sue I agree with is one where one character just absolutely makes everyone else obsolete. If you make an OC that does this to the canon cast, you'll irritate your readers because your readers are likely fans of that canon cast.

Let's say we have a Harry Potter fanfiction where an OC is a new wizard at Hogwarts and he just so happens to be the most powerful wizard ever recorded in history. Dementors get depressed around him. When he summons his greatest fear, the spell fails because he fears nothing. Voldemort fears him even more than he fears death. He's immune to the 3 Unforgivable Curses. Either he's on-screen casually obliterating every obstacle in his path or the canon cast is sitting around discussing how great he is. "Oh, I wish I were as smart as him," Hermione says, wistfully, staring at the picture of him she always carries around with her everywhere she goes.

...Yeah. Don't do it. It's more fulfilling, for both the authors and the readers, to see a character in-line with everyone else. If you make a self-insert and you tell a story about how you triumphed through trial and camaraderie with your peers (the canon characters), isn't that more satisfying compared to you telling a story about how the plot ended before it even began because you exist?

​

Those are the main points I've seen. I hope this was helpful and/or thought-provoking!

submitted by /u/primeapeisangry [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/2N7zbc3