Forum:FC:Café Fanfic XIII



A bit belatedly, here's a Café Fanfic topic for June.

Just like the previous ones, we're going to talk about fan-fiction (yours). The basic ground rules are the same. Please restrict this to stuff from your fan-fiction, but aside from that, no pressure. You can suggest, make observations, but no condemning other people's work and "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

June's topic: Let's talk about mistakes. What's an idea or a concept you had for a story or a character that ended up getting shelved? Why did you shelve it? Did it ever get adapted into something else? Atarumaster88  ( Talk page ) 20:26, June 10, 2012 (UTC)

Atarumaster88

 * I was in the middle of writing Force Exile IV: Guardian and was planning the following Yanibar Tales. I had an idea for a story that would allow readers to get to know Morgedh clan Kel'nerh, a new character introduced in FE IV. This story would place Selu Kraen and Morgedh on an Imperial COMPNOR/ImpRedesign ship investigating a series of demented scientific experiments on alien species. It was supposed to be a foray into the horror genre. A couple things happened that cause the story to be canned. First off, I wasn't excited about the story concept. It was less about the characters and more about fighting a combination of mad science and Imperial baddies. Meh. Second, I read Deathtroopers and while it was an okay read, writing something in that genre had even less appeal. Ultimately, I cut the story and ended up merging some parts of its concept with another story concept involving Akleyn Kraen and Bryndar Knrr which became Deception on R'alla instead, which I felt turned out much better. Atarumaster88  Jedi_Order.svg ( Talk page ) 20:26, June 10, 2012 (UTC)

MPK

 * (Spoiler-sh-ness for my stories, in case anyone cares) I'm not exactly sure if this counts, but my novella Legends of the Jedi: The Beast of Rutan was originally a much simpler story about a straight-up "Good Jedi vs Evil Jedi in abandoned tombs" plot. I think that was I was going for was something a bit like one of my earlier stories, River, where I sort of told the tale of a battle between a Jedi and Sith which, though they both had backstories and some personality traits, served more as a symbol for the entire Jedi vs Sith concept (like how a Jedi's life is about sacrifice, how innocents will always suffer because of their conflict, etc) than anything else; in other words, my initial idea was for a story consisting of a one-scene duel where we learn about the two combatants and what they and their conflict says about their respective sides and about galactic history and shit. In the end I decided that this was too simple and too familiar a story, for as soon as I actually started developing the protagonist, Morgent Kelbus, I quickly decided that the story would be about characters, rather than archetypes. Thus I introduced Kelbus as a (I hope, anyway) skilled and righteous but slightly arrogant Jedi Knight and his non-Forceful friend and companion Euthsia (who didn't exist in my earlier conception) as a foil to his character. Likewise the antagonist, Lavidean Dargus, who had begun as an "ordinary" fallen Jedi, evolved into a far more monstrous figure, and the story drifted a bit into the horror genre as a result. I'm very glad that I decided to take the story in a direction that I hadn't gone down before. -MPK, Free Man  22:46, June 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I got a better one now, this one from wayyyy back, when the main storyline I was writing here was the so-called Dark Order series, which began as simply a continuation of the dark-side ending of ' and ended up turning into something of an alternate post-RotJ galaxy. Once I started thinking about the timeline before 14 ABY, I started realizing that there was a bunch of stuff in the canon that I didn't like and didn't want to be assumed to have happened in the continuity (Dark Empire, Darksaber, KJA's Jedi Academy books, etc) and I consequentially felt a compulsive need to come up with replacements for them. And as I was realizing all this, I realized that the game JKA itself actually has a pretty lame-ass story with utterly depthless characters (including a protagonist who is actually too dull, lifeless, and uninteresting to garner a significant ), a primarily unimaginative plot, and weird leaps of logic. So in order to better lead into the post-dark side ending story with a backstory that was actually good, I decided to write a series called the Jedi Academy Chronicles or something along those lines. Essentially, it would have been a series of short stories re-telling the events of JKA, but in such a way that the characters (most importantly Jaden and Rosh) would be likable and have actual personalities, the plot would be a lot better-strung-together, and Jaden's progression as a Jedi would consist of more than simply killing a shitton of people. I liked the idea because it sounded better than slogging through the unholy amount of novels I had planned. I abandoned it though because it, too, was too big, and I actually ended up losing interest in the entire Dark Order series. The Jedi Academy Chronicles sort of lives on, though, as my current Legend of the Jedi series follows a similar spirit (that is, a series of shorter stories that I can crank out without having to have a shitton of continuity to keep track of). -MPK, Free Man ''' 12:42, June 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * So do you consider your Legend of the Jedi series to all occur in the same continuity, or are they separate from each other? Does the distinction even matter given that they are not interconnected? Atarumaster88  Jedi_Order.svg ( Talk page ) 22:29, June 17, 2012 (UTC)
 * Technically they do take place within the same continuity, but only two out of the fourteen-ish stories I have planned are directly connected to previous ones (sharing characters and such) - so except for those two, the distinction doesn't matter a whole lot. The point of the series is to explore the Jedi from its foundation down to just before the Great Hyperspace War, showing how those ancient Jedi's philosophies and ways of doing things were similar to and different from those that we're familiar with from later eras, and what sort of roles they played in early galactic history. So there's not really a whole lot of interconnectedness other than the fact that they're spread across a single history. That's why it's far easier and less painful to keep straight than what I wanted to do before: the canon has way more crap stuffed into twelve-ish in-universe years post-RotJ that I'd have to deal with than in the thousands of years that this series takes place in. -MPK, Free Man  00:26, June 18, 2012 (UTC)

Trak
Hoo boy, where to begin? Well, many have pointed out the less-than-spectacular climax of Breakfast in Bedlam, and I did have another version planned. However, that version was rendered unusable due to the environment I have placed the characters in. There simply wasn't any way that I could have made it work in a way that I would be satisfied with, so it was shelved. Later, I started drafting up notes for a sequel, which I planned to incorporate that failed scene in. That whole project was shelved indefinitely. The story had taken a different turn since I started Wasting the Day in Bedlam.

And then there's the cringe crap from years ago, parts of which still float around in small capacities in my fanon, and all of which have been forgotten about. I'm not going into details as there's really no need. Just think of what a ninth-grade fangirl would write and you'll have a general idea of what I mean by "cringe crap." Trak Nar Ramble on 08:27, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

Goodwood

 * Well, probably my biggest mistake was not taking the time to do Impact Events justice, as the last half even to me now seems a bit rushed and more than a little hare-brained. Eventually I'm going to pull it and give the story the justice it deserves, namely a hefty dose of proper exposition, more believable and drawn-out confrontations, and a new "villain" for the big climax (not to mention nixing a few of those whacky add-ins). On the other side of the coin is the adaptive novel for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords that I had started about three to four years ago (wow, how time flies). It got shelved indefinitely due to the fact that there was just no way I could bring myself to complete such a task; the resulting word count would have easily gone over Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Instead, I referenced some of my own interpretations as put forth in that novel into my other fanon stories, most notably Laera Reyolé's story arc in the Tales from the Corps series. The most notable one is, of course, my idea of having Vima Sunrider being the Jedi Exile. 22:57, June 17, 2012 (UTC)
 * Funny story, bro, is that I myself also started and threw out a TSL novelization. It sounded like such a cool idea, how I'd be able to fix the plot holes from the game, throw in ideas of my own (for instance, I planned on having segments of the story told from Darth Nihilus' trippy point of view, and also on including Highlander-esque flashbacks to the Exile's experiences in the war), and all that. Then I realized that it meant I'd have to go through the whole game, figure out what areas I'd want to include and what to leave out, what to change, what to gloss over, and keep track of all that, and then actually write it. That discouraged me, and I was only a few paragraphs into the prologue when I realized that if I pursued the project seriously, I'd probably just end up gouging my own eyes out. -MPK, Free Man  00:44, June 18, 2012 (UTC)