Fanfic status update
Sep. 4th, 2017 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tangaroaAbout seven or eight years ago I had an idea for a fanfic: "What if Samus and Iji had a fight?" That's not very original, I'll admit, but I banged out more text for it than any other fic I've worked on before it sank into a morass of headcanon and fanwankery that didn't look good in foresight or hindsight. To sum it up in one line, it was supposed to be a combat fic and they spent most of their time on a shopping trip.
I revived the story last year with a few mental guidelines. Cut back the fanwankery and build the characters around the headcanon. Rename the characters so they are not the exact same characters but expys, obvious analogues or parodies that the reader can recognize if I write them well (spoiler: I don't) and who also are appealing and interesting characters on their own merits. Add more action and adventure (and fewer shopping trips) and make it meaningful.
For a time the fic's going name was Let's You And Her Fight which was a great name except that the team will change in the second season and include a male fighter. I changed the name to Crash Champions because it kinda-sorta invokes Smash Brothers, which the universe is based around to explain whySamus/Alex Smith and Iji/Jill would be having a fight. I will probably change the name again to Clash Champions which invokes combat and has an actual meaning in English.
Then the fic expanded to include other teams of fighters, a scheduled tournament, team managers, referees, corporate politics, and offworld adventures in every episode. The first fic didn't have any of that. It had ended with Celes stealing Mick's ship and going around the multiverse knocking off the big bads of other video games. That sort of thing is going to be a part of the new story and will turn out differently.
I now have a finished draft of the first of 13 planned episodes. Most of it is still that shopping trip.
My other fics are going nowhere fast. The most promising of them was Odyssia Papadopoulos and the Princess of the Skies which got bogged down in the need to explain all of the Holy Shit that just happened (tldr: an ancient god of war attacks a Russian base during the Cold War) and I don't have anything for the main characters to do, which is really bad for a story that is supposed to be about these same characters. I haven't touched any of the other fics in close to a year.
I revived the story last year with a few mental guidelines. Cut back the fanwankery and build the characters around the headcanon. Rename the characters so they are not the exact same characters but expys, obvious analogues or parodies that the reader can recognize if I write them well (spoiler: I don't) and who also are appealing and interesting characters on their own merits. Add more action and adventure (and fewer shopping trips) and make it meaningful.
For a time the fic's going name was Let's You And Her Fight which was a great name except that the team will change in the second season and include a male fighter. I changed the name to Crash Champions because it kinda-sorta invokes Smash Brothers, which the universe is based around to explain why
Then the fic expanded to include other teams of fighters, a scheduled tournament, team managers, referees, corporate politics, and offworld adventures in every episode. The first fic didn't have any of that. It had ended with Celes stealing Mick's ship and going around the multiverse knocking off the big bads of other video games. That sort of thing is going to be a part of the new story and will turn out differently.
I now have a finished draft of the first of 13 planned episodes. Most of it is still that shopping trip.
My other fics are going nowhere fast. The most promising of them was Odyssia Papadopoulos and the Princess of the Skies which got bogged down in the need to explain all of the Holy Shit that just happened (tldr: an ancient god of war attacks a Russian base during the Cold War) and I don't have anything for the main characters to do, which is really bad for a story that is supposed to be about these same characters. I haven't touched any of the other fics in close to a year.
