Muv-Luv Franchise - FanFiction Discussion

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Mangathell

Not quite... We are after all looking at an alt-history setting so there are already plenty of characters that should be interesting and it would satisfy that nagging question I have of "where the blazes did kouki go and tread on a butterfly back then to get the shogunate as it's depicted in 2001" and I have to admit I think I found a couple of moments too

Course then there is also what the wiki says on the topic of 1867 (less than a paragraph) which is kinda... troubling, and quite frankly what it says is either a mistranslation of the original source or kouki's understanding of late Tokugawa shogunate history is... Horrendously off...

Also Fireminer do you even sleep? 1:00am ish, 11:20am and now? All in one day?

The morning post is my twin brother's, the rest is mine.

Also, when you writing a History fic, you not just staying with the events, you also have to transcedd the spirit of them. Boy, tell you, it's like a writer's nightmare! I have only seen two Code Geass fics have succeded doing that.

[MrTerrorist]

Originally Posted by sasahar17

I know I don't come around here much anymore, but I thought I'd share something with you guys I put up over in Space Battles in case it interests you.

-=-

As yet untitled Mass Effect / Pacific Rim Crossover Idea

-=-

“We always thought alien life would come from the stars, but it came from deep beneath the sea… a portal between dimensions in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Breach.”



“The first kaiju made land fall in New York City in 1971. By the time ships, fighters, tanks took it down two weeks later, five cities and tens of thousands of lives were lost. We buried our dead, memorialized the attack, and then tried to move on.The second attack hit Rio de Janerio six months later, then the third hit Lisborn six months after that. Then we learned… this was not going to stop. We had to fight.”



“The world came together, pooling its resources as we had never seen before to stop the Kaijuu. To do that, we needed a new weapon. The Tactical Surface Fighter was that weapon. Huge bipedal machines created in our own image that would fight the monsters we feared. Based off experimental technology used in NSAS’s space program, these eighteen meter tall titans were more powerful and more maneuverable that anything we had ever seen.”



“A new coalition was formed. Hundreds of willing soldiers took up arms. As the United Nations Army, humanity would fight and defeat these monsters. Or so we thought.”



“That was thirty years and two and a half billion lives ago, and we are no closer to winning now than we were back then. Worse still, another rift opened up somewhere in the Pacific five years ago, and now countries that had once thought to have been safe came under siege as well. The Kaijuu are coming out faster and larger than ever before. Humanity’s time was running out. We were nearing our breaking point. It is the end of days.”



“My name is Kagami Sumika, and I am one of the survivors of the city of Tokyo when the first Pacific Kaijuu hit our country and killed everyone I know and loved… including the boy who meant everything to me. As a Tactical Surface Fighter Pilot of the Imperial Japanese Army, I was prepared to give my life fighting these Kaijuu to give humanity the time it needed to prepare colony ships that would flee our plant to find a new home.”



“Then one day, something else came though the rift…”

-=-

The idea is that when the Kaijuu's masters didn’t put all their eggs in one basket, they were attacking several realities at once, namely this one. Instead of the Beta, this AU reality (because Imperial Japan, and not democratic Japan, yea) is under siege from both oceans by the Kaijuu. Because of their lower tech level when the siege started, Jaeger tech and Drift technology were not possible for this humanity, hence why they ended up developing the smaller, more maneuverable but less powerful TSFs instead.

This world developed ‘Real Robots’ to fight the Kaijuu instead of deciding to use ‘Supers’. TSFs are a real robot version of a fighter jet: and despite their effectiveness (somewhat) against the BETA, the Kaijuu are a very different enemy what what the TSFs were canonically designed to fight. Just as a Jaeger would have serious problems against a horde (it would be the case of ants swarming the elephant), the TSFs, even in large numbers, are ill suited to fight the Kaijuu. 36mm shells won’t penetrate a Kaijuu’s hide very well and would need large volumes of fire to even scratch the bastard. Their Melee Halberds can’t project the same kind of force that a single blow from a Jaeger can give. Worse still, they'd get Kaijuu blue everywhere, which would contaminate the area. Also as TSFs are small and fragile they’d be crushed in one hit from a Kaijuu, meaning the death toll of the soldiers would be enormous.

TSFs aren’t the best idea when it comes to fighting a 500+ foot long force of nature that can tank nuclear warheads like they were firecrackers (well, Slattern did). It isn’t their fault: unlike in the Pac Rim world, the techbase the TSFs were created from is far behind the one the Jaegers were based out of, and by the time the tech rolled around for it (the Muv Luv people have the XG-70 right) the world was too invested into TSFs to realize that they were using the wrong type of Giant Robot and they should try something else.

To make things even worse, the second rift opened in the Pacific a few months after another one of the Kaijuu’s siege campaigns on another dimension (guess which one) went belly up in the most spectacular fashion, so this reality became an even higher priority target. Not that the UN Army, IJA, IRG, EU, etc… cares for that very much since they have no clue how the Kaijuu think: this world don’t have drift technology (Yuuko is working on it and failing). For all they knowThe Kaijuu might have the mentality of the Pyro from TF2.

All in all, they are losing, and losing badly. So here they’re already preparing for their own version of Operation Babylon, and everyone just going through the motions because there’s nothing else to do but hope for the best.

All the usual elements and character of Muv Luv: an entire generation forced to fight in a losing war, disparate factions of humanity at each other’s throats, humanity pushed to the very brink of extinction… all that jazz. Versus the Kaijuu. It doesn’t work out all that well for them. They got whupped, and now the doomsday clock is thinking.

This is what happens when a world with Real Robot attitudes and Real Robot weapons tries taking on the Kaijuu: while TSFs are far more numerous than the Kaijuu, they are machines and weapons and don’t pretend to be anything else. Think of what happens if TAs from Gasaraki tried taking on the Angels: not fun. Kaijuu are forces of nature, and mortal weapons can’t hope to stop an oncoming storm.

It’s really a pity they used the wrong tech tree. Despite being grounded by real world limitations (…somewhat), Jaegers are Supers. Although they are made of metal and circuitry, each individual Jaeger is a titan in its own right. More importantly the PPDC has a super robot approach to doing things that fares well against the Kaijuu. Sure they may be slower than Kaijuu (in water), more expensive to maintain AND harder to find pilots for, but once all the elements fall into place Jaegers stop being mere weapons and start being monsters in their own right. Jaegers exist to slay the Kaijuu. It’s their job. It’s in their NAME. Then there's drift technology, which is practically a necessity for learning how to get through the breaches...

It's really too bad this world doesn't have Jaegers...

This is good. I can imagine Yuuya and Yui piloting Gipsy Danger, Latrova and Nastassja in Cherno Alpha, Cui Yifei and her pilots riding a Quad-armed Crimson Typhoon and Striker Eureka either by Meiya and Yuuhi or Cryska and Inia. Coyote Tango is fair game for everyone.

[Mangathell]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

The morning post is my twin brother's, the rest is mine.

Also, when you writing a History fic, you not just staying with the events, you also have to transcedd the spirit of them. Boy, tell you, it's like a writer's nightmare! I have only seen two Code Geass fics have succeded doing that.

Ah! Okay that explains the mystery of the "ever wakeful" Fireminer! Also I'm not that much of a greenhorn when it comes to writing... But tis all cool! It's the Internet!

Wall 'o' text ahoy

Anyway, if you ask me, the events of the time aren't the hard part, it's actually creating the background for the events, making sure anachronistic things don't appear in speech or opinions and such like, an example of something that could be out of place would be that the chōshū domain (one of the key instigators of the fall of the shogunate) willingly working alongside the Tokugawa shogunate.

(never would have happened in a million years, the daimyo of chōshū spent 260 years asking the question "is the shogunate weak enough that we could successfully overthrow them?" All over a grudge held from when Tokugawa Leyasu rose to the shogunate and stripped them of their wealth.)

Anyway enough history lesson... Tis boring to most people, I should remember this...

Also what were the names of those fics? Just for curiousity's sake.

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Mangathell

Ah! Okay that explains the mystery of the "ever wakeful" Fireminer! Also I'm not that much of a greenhorn when it comes to writing... But tis all cool! It's the Internet!

Wall 'o' text ahoy

Anyway, if you ask me, the events of the time aren't the hard part, it's actually creating the background for the events, making sure anachronistic things don't appear in speech or opinions and such like, an example of something that could be out of place would be that the chōshū domain (one of the key instigators of the fall of the shogunate) willingly working alongside the Tokugawa shogunate.

(never would have happened in a million years, the daimyo of chōshū spent 260 years asking the question "is the shogunate weak enough that we could successfully overthrow them?" All over a grudge held from when Tokugawa Leyasu rose to the shogunate and stripped them of their wealth.)

Anyway enough history lesson... Tis boring to most people, I should remember this...

Also what were the names of those fics? Just for curiousity's sake.

That is what I am talking about! Might I recommend for you that it would be much better if you choose something more wide-know, like WWII (with the cast is Muv-Luv characters's grandparents)?
The name of these fics are: "Raise that Bloodier Banner" by firelordzuko (Lelouch and Nunnally living the storm of 1789 French Revolution, then the Napoleon Empire), and "Code Geass: Rebellion on The Other Side" by kaiser11492 (Zero found himself in 1920s Korea, where Japan rule the peninsula). Two magnificent story, I say!
The reason for us to share this account is simply because we also puplished our fics on the same account.

[Mangathell]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

That is what I am talking about! Might I recommend for you that it would be much better if you choose something more wide-know, like WWII (with the cast is Muv-Luv characters's grandparents)?
The name of these fics are: "Raise that Bloodier Banner" by firelordzuko (Lelouch and Nunnally living the storm of 1789 French Revolution, then the Napoleon Empire), and "Code Geass: Rebellion on The Other Side" by kaiser11492 (Zero found himself in 1920s Korea, where Japan rule the peninsula). Two magnificent story, I say!
The reason for us to share this account is simply because we also puplished our fics on the same account.

Awesome, thanks fireminer firelordzuko seems to ring a bell for me for some reason, I wonder if I've stumbled upon his stuff before?

Yes, WWII would be interesting in of itself, especially when it comes to seeing the war from the side of those who lost the war, much like "all is quiet on the western front" as well as the question of how did the Americans get the Japanese to submit without dropping a pair of nuclear bombs, which is its own interesting question.

[Fireminer]

@Mangathell: You are welcome! A WWII fic has been boiling inside my head for sometime, and Muv-Luv got just the qualities?
Anyway, we have been discussed about Alternative from the begining, so let have a change of topic to Extra! What key elements do you think that made a good Extra fic?

[Mangathell]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

@Mangathell: You are welcome! A WWII fic has been boiling inside my head for sometime, and Muv-Luv got just the qualities?
Anyway, we have been discussed about Alternative from the begining, so let have a change of topic to Extra! What key elements do you think that made a good Extra fic?

If one were to write an 'extraverse' fic then you'd probably go for short pieces that are filled to the brim with well written comedy, as thats the nature of the 'extraverse' after all. alternatively a well written plot where the writer cruelly reveals that not even the 'extraverse' is safe from the BETA.

For example shirogane wakes up back in the 'extraverse' a few days go by and he doesn't remember a thing about the unlimited/alternative... That is until he is rather rudely awoken by sumika once again with shouts of "takeru-chan have a look at the news on the tv" and lo and behold humanity discovers that a probe to mars has discovered 'Martians'... Oh dear... We are in trouble!

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Mangathell

If one were to write an 'extraverse' fic then you'd probably go for short pieces that are filled to the brim with well written comedy, as thats the nature of the 'extraverse' after all. alternatively a well written plot where the writer cruelly reveals that not even the 'extraverse' is safe from the BETA.

For example shirogane wakes up back in the 'extraverse' a few days go by and he doesn't remember a thing about the unlimited/alternative... That is until he is rather rudely awoken by sumika once again with shouts of "takeru-chan have a look at the news on the tv" and lo and behold humanity discovers that a probe to mars has discovered 'Martians'... Oh dear... We are in trouble!

Thank you for your useful advice, but you see, what we are doing is really unorthodox: Mixing LBX with Muv-Luv! We write this as an experiment for the character development. Using Valgern-On! as the core game, well, the classic LBX plotline: Shirogane playing the game, meeting new friends and assemble a team, joining a tournament and destroying an evil scheme on the way!

[Mangathell]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

Thank you for your useful advice, but you see, what we are doing is really unorthodox: Mixing LBX with Muv-Luv! We write this as an experiment for the character development. Using Valgern-On! as the core game, well, the classic LBX plotline: Shirogane playing the game, meeting new friends and assemble a team, joining a tournament and destroying an evil scheme on the way!

Hmm, I just went and refreshed my mind on what you're currently writing, which incidentally I've got favourited on ffnet by the way, and the mention of LBX has me a bit lost to be honest though :/ (I've spent most of the last decade living under a rock a lot of the time) but yes, a much more pertinent piece of advice than what i gave before would be make sure you have a clear view of what you're going to be writing especially with evil schemes. Perhaps a cheating team is something you're thinking of concerning evil schemes?

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Mangathell

Hmm, I just went and refreshed my mind on what you're currently writing, which incidentally I've got favourited on ffnet by the way, and the mention of LBX has me a bit lost to be honest though :/ (I've spent most of the last decade living under a rock a lot of the time) but yes, a much more pertinent piece of advice than what i gave before would be make sure you have a clear view of what you're going to be writing especially with evil schemes. Perhaps a cheating team is something you're thinking of concerning evil schemes?

Nope, more than that! Something that explain Meiya's family and Makabe's death, the reason why Takamura Mastada abanddoned Mirai Bridges and Yuuy. Onething that can string Agari's madness with the Refuge Liberation. A total Alternative Universe merged with Extra background, that is what I aiming!

[Alastor Mobius Toth]

I forgot to mention this in Wiki when it was argued over, but I will say it now:

Masatada didn't leave Mira. She left him, when he went to Japan - basically, when he tried to contact her again, she vanished. So pretty much everything wrong with Bridges family can be traced to Mira.

Also, a lot of things in Total Eclipse wouldn't work in Extraverse without serious gymnastics. For example, Masatada would never have to leave back to Japan, meaning Yui would have never been born (or would be born as Mira's second child, a busty, golden-haired ojou-sama). ESPers wouldn't exist, meaning no Cryska or Inia. Tarisa would most likely be stuck in Nepal with God-knows how many siblings. The list goes on.

[Fireminer]

Thanks! That is why I am planning a "Valgern-On World Chapionship" arc latter. That is going to be quite a rumble!
Actually, quite a lot of thing could be fitted into Extraverse: Kasumi, Inia and Cryska are Computer Data (think of Volcaloid). Refuge Liberation is actually a band of mercenaries, hacker, trained orphan,... Yuuya went to Japan after almost scrapped a prototype (and his mother last request). Agari became insane after being given a powerful GR (On a side note, I am using mechs from SRW)... And who said Yui has to be a Takamura?

[Wild Goose]

I say, because I want my incestuous pairings goddamnit.

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Wild Goose

I say, because I want my incestuous pairings goddamnit.

Well, suit yourself. But I think that is just an obstacle to their love. You know that Yui is a traditionalist.
Currently writing these last sentences of Chapter II. Please looking for it on the earlier next month!

[Darthtabby]

I don't see myself getting around to writing anything based on it any time soon, but I had an interesting story idea recently.

Someone had mentioned a while back that they thought the refugee camps had potential that hadn't been very well explored. Now one problem with this is that TSF's are kind of a hallmark of the franchise and a story that focused entirely on refugees wouldn't really showcase them very much. But I think a refugee camp could be an interesting starting point for a story.

So basically, you have some kid in a refugee camp in one of the countries near the front lines. Like just about everyone else there, he's pretty desperate, and his desperation leads him to resort to theft, which soon gets him in trouble with the authorities. The authorities are also pretty desperate however, and they don't really have the resources to keep a lot of prisoners, so they more or less forcibly conscript him into the army.

Anyhow this kid shows an aptitude for TSF piloting. Unfortunately for him, this leads to him getting assigned to a unit that is a bit like Zhar battalion. Its made up largely of unwanted kids like himself and frequently gets deployed where there's heavy fighting. Its not a place that's kind to newcomers who've just completed a bare bones TSF training course -they have to either learn fast or die.

Now being a Muv Luv story of course there are a lot of girls in this guy's unit, but with the exception of the newcomers they're mostly hard nosed veterans who are tough enough to survive in a unit where life and death combat is par for the course and respect comes only with strength. Weaklings are in for a pretty rough time.

Now I haven't decided exactly where the story would take place or exactly what the characters would be like, but any thoughts on the general concept?

[sasahar17]

Originally Posted by Darthtabby

Now I haven't decided exactly where the story would take place or exactly what the characters would be like, but any thoughts on the general concept?

I think I have an old snip lying around for ML: DYRL regarding Nastassja for you that you may like (Goose knows the one I think). Lemme dig around in my fanfic drafts file and see if I can find it for you.

[Chibiloli]

I've got idea's, but I don't wanna put it up in public, everybody here has interesting stories though, I wish I could write like you guys.

[Azrulnin]

PaulXion fic is out Chap 76

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7112821/76/

[sasahar17]

Originally Posted by Chibiloli

I've got idea's, but I don't wanna put it up in public, everybody here has interesting stories though, I wish I could write like you guys.

Hey now! Don't get disheartened. We all started somewhere. Trust me, I used to suck big time. But then I published Gundam Seed: Sea of Stars, which sucked so bad I feel the distinct urge to go back in time and punch myself for even coming up with it and just kept going.

I'm still nowhere near the level of some of the people I follow on Spacebattles (Earthscorpion, Aratech, Immatrael, etc...) or even the people here (Looking at you AMT), but as long as I keep this in mind, I know I'll reach that point one day.

The harest parts are getting started in the first place. After that, it's all about making mistakes, learning to take criticism, learning from it and then applying it to your own work. Reading alot of other material is also essential. Sounds like it's a bit of work, and it is, but you only get out what yyou put in. Once you got that nailed down, I guarentee you'll be better than a vast majority of other fanfiction writers on the net.

If it bothers you that much, release it here like wavehawk's been doing. If you're a bit more confident, you can just take the plunge by publishing elsewhere like ff.net where you can access a wider audience, and hopefully attract someone who will help you critique your weaker points. It's your choice.

I hope this helps!

EDIT: Shit, missed this:

Originally Posted by Azrulnin

PaulXion fic is out Chap 76

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7112821/76/

Nastassja snippet delayed. Excuse me for a bit. This Sasahara needs to read every so often too.

[Wild Goose]

Originally Posted by Chibiloli

I've got idea's, but I don't wanna put it up in public, everybody here has interesting stories though, I wish I could write like you guys.

Dude, don't sweat it. I've been writing on and off in some manner since 1998 (first thing I ever wrote was half After Action Report, half roleplay of my Command & Conquer missions ).

The trick to writing, I find, is to read a lot - authors like Clancy, Griffin, Weber, Ambrose, Couch, Tolkein, Lois McMaster Bujold - and when you write something, read it out loud to yourself.

Everyone had to start from humble beginnings. The important thing is to write, and then be prepared to accept criticism - but if you can do that, then you're on the right path.