Final Fantasy Fanfic Idea Thread

Draconic

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I'm from Beast's Lair, and that place has reams of fanfiction. The vast majority of it is in the top 5% too. No tolerance for poor writing, we can and should do better, and we will. Not as something to enforce so much as a high standard to which we should individual ly That mindset should be brought over here, if it's not already, and if it is, let's reinforce it because this is a forum's fanfic section with a specialized subject. To that end, I'm bringing a thread concept from over there, over to FFF, as my first act. It became one of the biggest threads there. I'd hope that the same can happen with this one. And as a fanfic writer, it's only appropriate for my first post to be writing related.

Here, you can post your fanfic ideas for Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts/Suikoden/Star Ocean/etc., and have them critiqued and discussed. If you think you have a chance to 'sell' your idea, you can even make requests, but it's better for you to do it yourself, considering that most fanfic writers already have their own ideas. This part of the forums seems depressingly quiet, so I'm hoping this will bring some life back to it.

Now, as Keyne* once said:

Keyne said:
Like the title says, give'em to me. Make me rich. :3

*Beast's Lair user who started the thread.
 
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I had one from a long time ago, that was essentially a huge crossover, but also aimed to fix some of the plot inconsistencies of the games themselves.

The basic gist was that the summons were once a single entity of good, who was locked in an eons long battle with a being of pure evil. The evil being had been attempting to use Terra from IX to assimilate planets teeming with life, so that he could grow even more powerful. Eventually, as the battle got more fierce, the power of their attacks caused them both to split into multiple pieces, which scattered across the galaxy. The pieces of the good entity became the summons, with the pieces of the bad entity eventually making their ways into the main villains like Sephiroth, Kuja, Vayne, etc.
 
Megacrossovers rarely work. You see them all the time on AO3. Seventy odd character tags and less than 3000 words.

However, your general concept could work. If you're still thinking about the idea, slim it down to shifting the focus away from the games themselves, and focus on the summons maybe, and every time a world is saved, they gain more power against the Chaos/dark versions?

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I have something that I want to do for XV, but I'm writing for Beast's Lair right now, so I don't have the time. However, the idea requires time travel (only once, but even doing that in a non-obnoxious way is still a real trick), meaning that I'd have to start the thing off myself.

Basically, it's an AU that assumes that the world of FFXV is the very distant future of FFVI.

For a more detailed summary, I should start by saying that the six gods are six espers who Terra brought to life upon her death thousands of years earlier.

Starting at the end of the game, within days of the sun rising again, creatures that seem to have the same powers as the six gods start appearing, and unlike demons, they begin seeking out humanity's strongholds and attacking everything and everyone. I'll avoid any other spoilers, but aside from that, it's a partial crossover with FFVI. Bahamut, discovering the culprit behind these new giant and semi-omnipotent monsters, decides that everything he orchestrated using Noctis and his retinue took too long and decides to do it again, but faster this time, and he'll ultimately sacrifice its life (again) for Shiva's desire to keep the world alive. This'll probably happen around the end of the Gralea segment.

Kefka effectively uses the now inactive Starblight as a power source to resurrect himself. Mind you, this is Kefka who's been defeted once before. He's still a monstrous person with no redeeming qualities left, and has a snarky personality, but his godhood seemed to balance out his fractured mind when you meet him again, so he's sane, more or less, and is now just trying to make the world into something that he likes. Specifically a world where life is as miserable and meaningless, as he believes it to be. In other words, the only kind of world that he can understand. And he does this by creating his own espers like you see him doing during the final battle in FFVI. As such, they are seen as gods until they start glassing the world. He destroys civilization in a matter of hours, with only humans who had moved back to distant outposts surviving. Everyone still in a city dies. Brainstorming right here, Aranea kills Xeno-Midgardsormr but is injured by Xeno-Valigarmanda and watches Biggs and Wedge die before it kills her too. Iris, Shiva, and Gladio will get killed by Xeno-Shiva, Ignis can defeat Xeno-Phantom and get killed by Xeno-Siren. Prompto doesn't die, which is probably worse than if he were killed for him because with his self-loathing, he'll probbly go insane without his friends. So all the main characters except him and maybe Cid and Cidney get killed.

This is what came of waiting ten years before being ready to take back the world.

When approached by Bahamut at the beginning, telling him to go back and do everything again, Noctis refuses, understandably outraged, not by the lack of appreciation for his own suffering, and not because he doesn't want to go back with Luna either, but because Bahamut is suggesting he start his journey over from Altissa, which would show indescribable contempt for the huge sacrifices made by his friends, specifically what happened to Luna, Ignis and Prompto. He doesn't get a choice however, and he and Luna wake up in their bodies the day before the rite with Leviathan, the latter's body no longer deteriorating. I'll need Noctis to meet with Luna to get the ring, otherwise, she still dies. With Noctis able to use the power of the Ring of the Lucii, it goes better this time, and Ardyn is unable to kill Luna, and Noctis finding Ignis before whatever happens to his eyes (assuming that we'll learn in the DLC) happens. Luna joining the party has a chain reaction of course, as the Starblight can't progress as quickly, and therefore, Niflheim doesn't turn into a horrifyingly empty ghostscape--actually it will, it'll just take longer to happen, specifically, maybe as long as it takes for them to reach Iedolas, so people start transforming or getting devoured by black oil and morphing into daemons while the party is forced to watch. I guess I'll have Luna cut Ravus' arm off at the shoulder to prevent him from getting consumed. His death could be more useful later anyway.) The warband assembles from there. Ardyn is still the villain for the beginning of the story.

Ardyn's complete victory in ending his family line is undone of course.

However, from the moment he vanishes and the Starblight is no longer under his direct control anymore, Kefka comes into play and starts using it to build himself a new body. Excuse for him already being around immediately upon the end of the game? Well, Ardyn didn't really care about turning everyone in the world into monsters, that was just an added bonus because it hurt the ungrateful scum that demonized him thousands of years ago, and besides, it's consumed the entire world, so why would he bother keeping a leash on it anymore. No point. So Kefka can still use it that way.

So, I'll probably write until the end of Gralea before asking someone to take over.
 
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Thank you for creating this thread. :) I will sticky it.



I personally don't agree with no tolerance for poor writing as every writer has to start somewhere. Some people love it but aren't that great and I think that's fine.
 
The no tolerance for poor writing is more something that I want people to hold themselves to, not what we're looking to each other to do.

Fanfiction.net is full of junk written by people begging you to review their 'really great, I swear' story or apologists who can't be bothered to make an effort at brevity for their summary. And of course, then there are the people who use spellcheck once but don't actually proofread their work.

This site is for a specific fandom, and it should therefore have a higher quality fanfiction archive than on ff.net. I'm not saying you have to be Mystwalker, or Pata Hikari, I just feel that we should all individually hold ourselves to a higher standard. We get better that way. We shouldn't compare what we do with other fanfiction, but with actual critically acclaimed published work. That's a recipe for fanfiction written with quality.

(The first guy ships Sane!Sephiroth/Cissnei and can actually make you believe it, which should be impossible. The second guy, well I don't think he's done any Final Fantasy work, but everything he's ever written is phenomenal.)
 
Megacrossovers never work. You see them all the time on AO3. Seventy odd character tags and less than 3000 words.

However, your general concept could work. If you're still thinking about the idea, slim it down to shifting the focus away from the games themselves, and focus on the summons maybe, and every time a world is saved, they gain more power against the Chaos/dark versions?

I disagree with the idea that larger crossovers never work. They usually don't. But then again, that's because most fanfiction comes purely from a place of fandom, with little regard for quality storytelling or a respect for the original work (which is fine if you're a new writer, or if you're doing it mostly for yourself). The reason I never did more than two and a half chapters of that idea (though I have the whole thing outlined chapter by chapter), is because I really didn't want to stretch believe-ability. There were some logistical concerns that kept me from moving forward. But regardless, I always did longer fanfiction (between 15k and 165k words), and made sure to balance the cast for the story being told, using characters only when relevant so as to maintain focus. This idea was to be like 25 chapters I believe, with each likely coming out to my comfortable median length of about 3000-3500 words. And the focus was to be only on FFVII-XIII (minus XI) with the lead characters playing the main roles. That leaves it with an ensemble cast of six main characters, very small side parts for other cast members from the games, the summons are essentially one character because they merge when they meet, as do the villains. And even before the villains merge, I need not explain the personalities of any of them, because they're explained in the games. I can instead just utilize them when needed.

The only other two characters were Garland from IX; never any proof that he died, and it fit perfectly that he would watch over Terra because he did so in the original story. I'd argue it would've given him more purpose than he had in the game, since he was just sort of thrown in IX haphazardly. The other one would be Jenova. The idea was that enough of her still remained in the Lifestream that she could be revived. Her role is but a different perspective on her original character. To Gaia, she was the Calamity from the Skies, eater of worlds. In this story, it would be revealed that she actually just scouted out planets perfect for Terra to assimilate, but was captured by the Ancients while on Gaia. Puzzle pieces I felt rather snugly fit within the events of both VII and IX. Not my best idea of course; I reserve those for original fiction. But something that I felt had some appeal, and some places it could go. The grand scale, and the reliance on Summons VS an ultimate evil I found fit well within the Final Fantasy narrative aesthetic.

Point is, I thought the idea through rather thoroughly, lol. I was just trying to summarize it concisely. Even still, what I described above is sparse as heck in terms of details.

The only other FF fanfiction idea I wanted to do, was basically novelizing Braska's pilgrimage. I thought it would be an interesting writing exercise, but didn't ever even begin brainstorming.
 
Logistical issues are often inevitable in megacrossovers, though as this is a Final Fantasy site, it would probably be prudent for me to change 'never work' to 'rarely work.' I mean, case and point: Kingdom Hearts.

And I suppose it's not fair of me to criticize your work without having sampled any of it. I apologize for coming across so harshly. I'll try not to do it again, (and after I just said that I'm not gonna do that. Draconic, you suck!)
 
Logistical issues are often inevitable in megacrossovers, though as this is a Final Fantasy site, it would probably be prudent for me to change 'never work' to 'rarely work.' I mean, case and point: Kingdom Hearts.

And I suppose it's not fair of me to criticize your work without having sampled any of it. I apologize for coming across so harshly. I'll try not to do it again, (and after I just said that I'm not gonna do that. Draconic, you suck!)

Haha, no worries. I myself tend to be a bit harsh when it comes to ideas like that as well. While I agree with Six that new writers are bound to make huge mistakes, and should be able to do so, it has always bothered me that so many fanfiction writers often use 'style' as an excuse for never improving. By far the most annoying thing to me is when fanfic writers refuse to respect the work of the original author(s). Unless the intention is to subvert ideas from the original, there's no point in ignoring huge plot holes or out of character moments your work might create if you're writing fanfiction. If one chooses to willfully ignore the hard facts of the original work, why even make it fanfiction instead of an original work? I totally understand that the idea I presented stinks of some potential noob mistakes, lol. And I won't hesitate to admit that very little of the fanfiction I've written is what I would call 'good'. But that mostly comes down to the execution. It was bad because I was using it as a way to learn how to write properly, without also having to deal with creating compelling worlds and characters; they were already there for me to make use of. I don't really write fanfics anymore, mostly because I don't have the time. But I'm dabbling in it a bit on my YouTube channel; made a short Dark Souls 2 oneshot about a year ago, and I have a few other ideas I want to use. I just need to find ways to get the proper footage for them. Each game has varying limitations on how well you can craft visual machinima for fanfiction, and I utterly failed at that in the DS2 video. But I digress... really just rambling at this point.
 
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