Gotta question here.

Alecsandr

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2015
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How do y'all feel about people picking up and writing for characters who've long since have been 'abandoned'? More specifically characters such as Briha, Lys, Queensquard, and the many others that seem to have been forgotten in the rush towards the horizon.
 

Wsan

Scientist
Creator
Jan 8, 2016
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I wholeheartedly anti-recommend this. Picking up from where a writer left off fucking sucks ass. Let me find you an old post I made about this in relation to Embry.

From one writer to another don't do it. Don't fucking do it. Don't even entertain the thought of doing it, no matter how much people clamour for it. Writing for other people's characters is HARD, and I had the advantage of being able to talk to the author(s) of the characters I've written for on a daily basis. You will start off, as every writer before you has (you didn't think you were the first, did you? Literally tens of people have tried this and failed) with good intentions. As time goes on you will begin to wonder if your writing is up to par with theirs, but more importantly also whether you're even writing in the same style. Here's the most difficult part of writing on someone else's behalf - it's really, really hard to know exactly what was intended for the character, or how they would react in a situation, and without the ability to even contact the original author your only option left is to take it entirely into your own hands and write the character how you think it should work, which is nerve-wracking. More important than the quality of the writing is the reasoning of the writing - are you hitting the same notes? The original reason people enjoyed this character, are you continuing along those lines? Can you say, with certainty, that you even know the reason people enjoy the character? Perhaps people don't like them for the same reason you do.

I say this not because I think you're not good or smart enough or some other bullshit but because you are a nice, promising writer and I don't want you - like many others - to flame out while writing someone else's stuff. I'm 99% sure Couch covered this in the past at some point saying basically what I am, and he was right. It was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now. Keep writing cool stuff, but it's best to let sleeping dogs lie. I know this comes off strong but I want to make it really clear that you (and every other potential writer) deserve better than burning out on something like this.

You will burn out and fade away and people will literally not even remember your forum username. A touch melodramatic, but you get the point.
 

zero point sixty

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2016
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London
I wholeheartedly anti-recommend this. Picking up from where a writer left off fucking sucks ass. Let me find you an old post I made about this in relation to Embry.

You will burn out and fade away and people will literally not even remember your forum username. A touch melodramatic, but you get the point.

I totally believe this is the case for a character like Embry, and even Briha and Lys since they're pretty well fleshed out, but do you think this applies to more minor characters as well?

As someone with an idea to write at some point (I'm currently messing around with canon-compliant fanfiction to get my toes wet) quite a few of the ideas I've been mulling over involve minor characters I'd like to see more of. The Queensguard was actually one of those since she/he isn't really developed outside of the fight scene (so not too much baggage), and the dynamic of her/him being, like, MtF or at least breaking gender conventions in a society that is gender-flipped (by our standards) is interesting to me.

Funnily enough, another minor character I had actually planned some stuff out for was Milly, but then a certain someone beat me to the punch (great scene, btw!).
 

Kesil

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
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her/him being, like, MtF
The Queensguard isn't MtF. That's how male nyrea look like. Same applies to Seifyn. But yeah, I'd like to see minor characters being extended (the Queensguard being one of said minor characters!). If I can recall correctly, Sera began that way.
 

Noob Salad

Captain Shitpost
Aug 26, 2015
4,374
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One time Wsan left and that made me sad.
 

Wsan

Scientist
Creator
Jan 8, 2016
1,731
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I totally believe this is the case for a character like Embry, and even Briha and Lys since they're pretty well fleshed out, but do you think this applies to more minor characters as well?
Eh. If you're writing like one or two scenes it's no big deal, as you'd expect. The problem is when you try to 'pick up' a character and go about writing everything they were apparently going to do.
 

zero point sixty

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2016
313
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London
The Queensguard isn't MtF. That's how male nyrea look like. Same applies to Seifyn. But yeah, I'd like to see minor characters being extended (the Queensguard being one of said minor characters!). If I can recall correctly, Sera began that way.

What I meant was that the Queensguard, a biologically male Nyrea, acts like and fulfils a social role that would typically be reserved for female Nyrea. They are even referred to as she in the text at various points, I think. Or is that the usual form for Nyrea? I can't recall the pronoun the text uses for Seifyn. It's not stated that she actually wants to be or identifies as female though, that's why I added the other half of that sentence, about her possibly just breaking gender conventions.

e: It's all a bit confusing, since in this context all male and female mean, I guess, is who's got eggs and who's got sperm.
 

Kesil

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
3,440
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Ah, yeah, you're right. Amusingly, I think that can be applied to Seifyn as well (I went through the Nyrean territories during the third day I played TiTS, so my memories are fuzzy at best). Pronoun wise, both are referred as she, but I don't remember if that was something usual between nyreans or just Steele's nanomachines and codex fooling around.
 

Alecsandr

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2015
218
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Yeah Wsan i've seen the burnout before on people picking up characters that have been left behind (mostly involving Embry, who turned out lovely by the way), but what i was meaning more or less with the topic was 'is this subject taboo?' i've seen people claim that writing for a character that already has/had an author would be infringing upon their work which is something i wouldn't want to do.

And yes i know writing within a set personality can be hard if you didn't create said personality, i'm a dm i've learned to adapt when players want a waifu/husbando, but thankfully the three i listed off have relatively simple easy to understand drives and personalities that i feel i could write for. also mostly what i'd be wanting to write wouldn't be sex scenes (queensguard being the exception to this as we've had no sexable nyrea males which i find odd)

i'm honestly not expecting anything i write to ever get in the game but i enjoy the characters enough that taking a crack at it would be worth it to me
 

Nonesuch

Scientist
Creator
Aug 27, 2015
2,190
3,552
I stole Sera and adopted Carrie. Ara Kei was abandonware before I decided to do something with them. It's not an impossible thing to do.

Most porno characters are not complex individuals with rich inner lives that are impossible to tease out what the original author intended to do with them. I think it's worthwhile reading back their scenes and if possible their docs, and then quickly summarising their traits, and what fetishes/emotional beats they were supposed to be a vehicle for. If you can do that you should feasibly be able to continue writing them, even if you'll never capture the original author's spirit.

Also very obviously you should ask the permission of the original author, if possible. Queensguard belongs to Savin, and he'll probably want to see anything you intend to do with him.
 

Alecsandr

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2015
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Yeah @Nonesuch i figured permissions were needed before proceeding with any attempt at writing for those characters. I figured i'd do them one at a time starting with the ones that i had the most motivation to write for, in this case Briha and Lys. Queensguard is totally a character i want to see written more for but i'd rather see Savin do that seeing as he's leagues better than me at writing, also these three were also the first 'abandoned' characters that i could think of off the top of my head.
 

paroxysm

New Member
May 20, 2018
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Pronoun wise, both are referred as she, but I don't remember if that was something usual between nyreans
I wondered if this was something I ought to add to bug report, but I also wasn't sure if that was meant to be a nyrean cultural quirk. For what it's worth, the Codex specifically uses "he" to refer to males.