Battle Fantasia: Idea Discussion Thread

[Sunshine Temple]

Well... isn't this lively.

Comartemis, official warning.

This is a violation of rule 1A and 1G with a trend of 1E. Comartemis the thread topic is not on your fic specifically (and thus you drift off topic) and shooting down other people's ideas goes against the civil conduct rules and drifts into flames.

People can disagree with you, and they might even be right, but even if they're wrong that does not give you justification for this behavior.

Any argument or appeal should be taken to PM.

If you want a thread to talk about your idea specifically that can be arranged.

[Comartemis]

*sigh*

Very well, split the thing.

[Pale Wolf]

Thread split, shiny new, idea-discussion-free thread for you.

And, edit so as not to double-post, and back on-topic: Lyrical Chronicles, the first Battle Fantasia spinoff that I'm aware of.

Seems to be adopting Nanoha as the framework for the crossover, with things dropping strangely into the setting. The author has mentioned the possibility of other magical girl series getting included (possibly via the same mechanism), but for now, it's Madoka and Nanoha, with Madoka-04 characters arriving in Uminari previous to A's.

Fortunately for the girls, though not for the rest of the population, they appear to have a source of witches on-world (whether or not there are witches native to that world is yet unknown).

Also, liberal Super Robot Wars expies.

I'm not entirely sold on the caliber of the writing itself, but the idea is good and fun stuff is happening. Bit early to say where it may or may not be going, though. But the author does have some good ideas.

[Wyrd]

Ask me if I care about the feelings of fictional people who aren't the main characters. We had this discussion dozens of pages ago and we decided that this was how we were going to do things. I'm not having a repeat of that discussion with you when the degree to which the military is useful has already been decided on, and by the people who are actually participating in the thread no less.

Actually, I feel that it was rather insulting of real world military and police organizations, as it dismisses both them and what they would try to accomplish. Unless they do not exist in the world of your story, there should be at least something devoted to their trying, and failing, to replace the magical girls/boys(quite a few mahou shoujo titles have magically active boys who just aren't the title character). Even once they realize that only these children have the ability to fight off many of the threats(such as from Alice 19th, where her enemies have no physical existence at all), the mahou's are going to face problems with being treated like children, especially if they are/look particularly young, even if they've been fighting monsters for years. This gives more character to the setting and gives the people you are trying to focus on more issues to deal with.

A possible reason for why there are so many more magically active people and aggressive entities, especially in Japan, is very simple: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What separates those two cities from all of the test sites for atomic bombs is also simple: the vast number of people killed by the blasts. Science suddenly has proof that life energy and magic are real, which could lead to them realizing that those explosions released massive amounts of magical radiation they never even knew about, weakening the fabric of reality and sounding the dinner bell for any parasitical monster within 30 realities. Something tells me that nuclear disarmament would suddenly get a lot more backing worldwide once this was discovered.

Ideas for the future of the story include this being how Usagi wound up queen of the world--she became one of the leaders of the magical forces of the world, gained enough respect from then that she was made their head honcho, partly because of her nearly incorruptible nature, with the rest of the world winding up giving her authority that starts off as just the authority for her forces to cross international lines in pursuit of monsters and slowly grows to them being a governmental body like the UN and later on the top authority for the planet. The spread of magical warriors across the world and their efforts to root out monsters and possessed humans could be the events referred to in SM R as her attempts to purify the world of evil. What the descendants of the Black Moon Clan either never knew/believed or forgot over the generations was that evil was defined simply as those creatures directly harmful to people.

[Comartemis]

Actually, I feel that it was rather insulting of real world military and police organizations, as it dismisses both them and what they would try to accomplish.

Maybe you should make a greater distinction between fantasy and reality then.

A possible reason for why there are so many more magically active people and aggressive entities, especially in Japan, is very simple: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What separates those two cities from all of the test sites for atomic bombs is also simple: the vast number of people killed by the blasts. Science suddenly has proof that life energy and magic are real, which could lead to them realizing that those explosions released massive amounts of magical radiation they never even knew about, weakening the fabric of reality and sounding the dinner bell for any parasitical monster within 30 realities. Something tells me that nuclear disarmament would suddenly get a lot more backing worldwide once this was discovered.

That's not too far off the mark from what we came up with for "why is Earth on everyone's hit list", given that you don't see dark kingdoms trying to invade, say, Mid-Childa for example. It's a variation on the old "planetary lei line" excuse some people use to make Tokyo the center of the universe, only in this case it's Earth's dimension on account of weakened barriers between us and the next few realities over (the difference between dimensions and realities being one of x coordinates vs y coordinates in a very simple way of putting it). That makes us a good "beachhead" universe for dark empires with a mind toward expansion.

[Sunshine Temple]

Less than three hours... Normally, I'd let this slide but your next post discussing the topic is an insult. Geeze.

Tempban, lifted the 16th

[Pale Wolf]

Aside from that.

I dunno if I'm much a fan of the 'oh no, nukes!' bit. If you have to time it to WWII, use the Holocaust - biggest accidental necromantic ritual ever? And/or Unit 731 and all the fun Japan pulled in China.

Personally, I've always had a taste for 'there's something sealed under Tokyo that everything's being drawn to'.

Your idea for NQS is... possible, but I'm not sure it's much my thing. I'll agree with the nearly-incorruptible, but she's not much of a leader, so you'd either need to have her grow in-fic, or claim that she has qualities that she's never demonstrated, and sometimes demonstrated actively not to have.

[Wyrd]

Your idea for NQS is... possible, but I'm not sure it's much my thing. I'll agree with the nearly-incorruptible, but she's not much of a leader, so you'd either need to have her grow in-fic, or claim that she has qualities that she's never demonstrated, and sometimes demonstrated actively not to have.

First, I'm definitely talking about manga Usagi, who actually experiences character growth. A couple more years and a few lesser threats under her belt, and she could become an effective leader. Her greatest ability as a leader is her ability to connect to people and raise morale, however, which is what these girls need, and when they hear that she was an actual princess in her prior life, it might give her a stronger following amongst the younger members. Being able to delegate well and using the aid of all of her Senshi as a ruling body for this society could lead to her becoming the leader you would not be horrified by the world accepting as Queen, even if the position had limited day-to-day effect on the various nations of the world.

As for why the dropping of nukes--it is the only event I can think of close enough to the time when those girls and boys started appearing that would make Japan unique. The effect could be spreading out from there, causing the next highest concentration of magical girls to be in the East coast of China and the other neighboring countries. A plotline that could be followed is that Japan initially tries to use this as proof of their genetic superiority, until it comes out that, percentage wise, gaijin born in the area are just as likely if not more likely to manifest supernatural powers.

On the other hand, if you want to go with them showing up all over the world and the number of them in Japan being a simple factor of population density, then all of the horrors of WWII could collectively be responsible. It could even be that the waning faith and belief in magic worldwide caused the available energies to concentrate in those who were most strongly attuned to it and most open to it, which were generally children.

Another possibility, based on the ley lines mentioned above, comes from the RPG Rifts. In it, a long time ago, Earth was one of the highest magic planets in the galaxy until an experiment performed by the most advanced civilization of the time, Atlantis, caused not only the destruction of Atlantis but caused most of the magical energy in the world to drain away. Since then, the energy had been slowly building back up, most of it staying contained in living beings and released upon their death to enter the lei lines and go into creating and sustaining new life. A series of nukes caused enough life energy to be released at once that the lei lines couldn't hold and dissipate it. This lead to fault lines slipping, setting off massive earthquakes and tsunamis, killing more people, dumping more energy into the lines, setting off volcanoes and massive storms, etc. What we are seeing in Japan in this fic is a small version of this, with the dumping of energy being enough to raise ambient magic in a local area.

An alternative take that ties in Sailor Moon is that Metallia and the war with the Silver Kingdom drained most of Earth's magical resources. Metallia could have broken out sooner, but it didn't want to because it would have starved. The actions of the early mahou shoujo and shonen, such as Sailor Moon and especially Tuxedo Kamen*, sped up energy build up in Japan, a spike which has slowly been spreading out over the planet.

*Given his direct connection to the life of the Earth.

Shadowrun also has an explanation, though it wouldn't work for why Japan is a focus for these events. In that, Earth is effectively in a magical tidal zone. We are at the end of the last low tide and the tide is rushing in, causing more and more magically active people to be born.

edit:

Maybe you should make a greater distinction between fantasy and reality then.

Just to clarify, I am quite aware of the difference between reality and fantasy. However, when the theme of your story is "How would the world react if it suddenly found out that magical girls were real, and how would they deal with learning of each other and their existence becoming public?", it is insulting to declare that the police and military would not only be useless, they wouldn't even try to help. A crackfic can be insulting to whomever it likes as that is part of the point, that it isn't trying to be realistic. The more realism you include in a story, the more offensive stereotypes and dismissals like this become. You may not find it offensive, but that does not make the multiple posters on here who found it offensive wrong.

[Pale Wolf]

... Okay, I've been watching Infinite Stratos.

That's it, I'm classifying this as a magical girl show now. I don't care if it's power armour, only girls can use it, they have bloody force fields, they wear the damn things in 'storage' form as things like earrings, and just now they gave two of the girls a transformation sequence.

That said, it might not be the easiest cross element. Since the world in that is chock-full of military-trained magical girls, you'd just have to give an epic-tier STUPID award to anyone who attacked it. It's almost as bad as the Dark Kingdom trying to open up shop on Midchilda.

Another magical girl show to add to the potential list is Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka, though there might be... tone mismatch. And the magical girls come from another world in absolutely massive numbers (like, 600 million in one year of class), so...

Oh, and response-wise.

Being able to delegate well and using the aid of all of her Senshi as a ruling body for this society could lead to her becoming the leader you would not be horrified by the world accepting as Queen, even if the position had limited day-to-day effect on the various nations of the world.

*Ahem*

Let's not center everything on Sailor Moon, eh? There are many other magical girls equally or better qualified to serve in a ruling body. Even if one grows and matures Usagi to the point where her ruling the world isn't a 'game over, man' scenario, they ain't gonna be growing her to the point where she (and/or the senshi) outclass the rest of the magical girl characters to the point where a reader who doesn't adhere to the church of Serenitism (yes I was horrified too) would believe they're so above the rest of the cast that they merit a leadership role without inclusion from the rest.

Your proposals certainly could work. Another thought: maybe the world's magic is tied up in something, for instance some kind of massive spell/shield/seal?

[Wyrd]

My main thoughts on Sailor Moon were based on it being one of the few series to specifically focus on the future, and not in the sense of a last episode that says, "ten years later..." Combining canons is one of the core difficulties of this type of mega cross.

Your proposals certainly could work. Another thought: maybe the world's magic is tied up in something, for instance some kind of massive spell/shield/seal?

If most of the world's energy was tied up in the seal on Metallia, and Sailor Moon and company were amongst the first of the new upsurge in mahou shoujo, then it could be the destruction of Metallia and that seal that has suddenly increased the amount of magic available worldwide. A common theme in these shows is that the title character, even if from a family or tradition of strong mages, is for some unknown reason significantly stronger than their forebears.

The future of Neo-Queen Serenity or whatever future the story goes for need not be mentioned at all or only mentioned as a few of the characters with precognitive abilities seeing the potential for greatness in her, even if she has so far failed to realize it.

Cardcaptor Sakura is really easy to work into this story, as she is a naturally strong mage who was forced to clean up her own mess when she accidentally scattered the artifacts made by one of the greatest wizards of his generation several centuries before. I'd love to see some scenes with her capturing Cardians and adding them to her deck.

Quite a few of the girls who only have power in an alternate world could still be part of this group, sharing emotional support and finally having someone else they can talk to about the crazy things they have seen, such as the girls from Magic Knight Rayearth.

The Lotus words of power from Alice 19th are difficult to master for most people, but she could teach some of them to associates with an affinity for magic and/or particular words. Even if you have only mastered one word, it can be a formidable addition to your abilities, such as the word for Heal or Water.

In Shugo Chaara, the title character is unique even in her series as being capable of purifying an x-egg. Everyone else has to destroy them to stop them. If she could get the assistance of someone who could teleport her and some other character bearers from around the world to alert her to when an x-egg forms(and they do apparently form naturally, just not as often as they are provoked into occurring in the show), she could save a lot more people and would be happy to do it.

If I recall correctly, Tokyo Mew Mew likewise requires one of the Mews for final purification, but the other warriors could help subdue the monsters so they could then be purified.

I'd like to see Kiki's magical delivery service get started up because she is one of the few to have powers but not have a specific enemy, at least not yet.

There are just so many possibilities and so many ways this could be taken that it needs to be written as one universe with several stories happening in it written by different authors. Since these are fanfics, a certain degree of discontinuity would, of course, be accepted, at least by me.

[Pale Wolf]

My main thoughts on Sailor Moon were based on it being one of the few series to specifically focus on the future, and not in the sense of a last episode that says, "ten years later..." Combining canons is one of the core difficulties of this type of mega cross.

True enough. Though remember, everything's going well off-course with the meeting. Which means 'senshi-only' future predictions are not necessarily valid.

Not everything's happening the same throughout the length of the series, so why should it happen the same a thousand years after the series?

The Lotus words of power from Alice 19th are difficult to master for most people, but she could teach some of them to associates with an affinity for magic and/or particular words. Even if you have only mastered one word, it can be a formidable addition to your abilities, such as the word for Heal or Water.

I have never even heard of this one, what is it?

There are just so many possibilities and so many ways this could be taken that it needs to be written as one universe with several stories happening in it written by different authors. Since these are fanfics, a certain degree of discontinuity would, of course, be accepted, at least by me.

That appears to be what's going on with the main Spacebattles thread.

The limit of the 'everything crossing over' format is that it can only really work in snippet format. You can't have coherent plot or character development without a fairly rigid continuity and strong agreement among the creators.

I'd say that if you wanted a really good story out of it, though, you'd need to limit the series selection to ensure compatibility and familiarity, and do it as one author, or at least a limited authorial group. The problem is that the very traits that make people good at cooperative writing also make them bad at writing a single high-quality story - namely, by being accomodating and willing to compromise, the author also loses the carefully-crafted story that they could otherwise present, because they just accomodated someone else's ideas and gave up something they were working towards and angling plot threads to deal with.

Similarly, too many characters means it's impossible to really focus on any of them and give them the treatment they deserve. To maximize quality, you need to keep a tight limit on the amount of elements there are in a universe. The limit varies by writer and the specifics of each universe, but it is limited.

This isn't to say that the Spacebattles thread isn't fun, but the problem is that a full multicross format like that ends up more slice of life than really telling a story. So it basically depends on what you're looking for.

(As you may've guessed, I seek the latter)

The key is... it's an idea thread. Which means if you want to tell a bunch of different stories, go ahead and write 'em. As different universes on the same theme. That lets you tell all the different stories you want, while still maintaining each story as being small enough to actually write. And, for that matter, small enough that the different series included in each universe can be slotted together coherently.

[Wyrd]

True enough. Though remember, everything's going well off-course with the meeting. Which means 'senshi-only' future predictions are not necessarily valid.

I've seen more than one fic where they intentionally let the Dark Moon Clan attack because they knew it was going to happen and didn't want to create a paradox. What they did instead was made certain that the city had been as thoroughly evacuated as they could without tipping them off and arranged things so that those who remained were mostly able to survive in shelters. She could have sent the rest of her forces, including the Outers as well as all of the other magical troops, away simply so that her past self would not learn about them before it was time to learn about them.

I have never even heard of this one, what is it?

Here is a wikipedia link for Alice 19th. In this story, a monk a long time ago discovered a certain number(I forget how many, but it may be 19, hence the title) a words and their runic counterparts that... I'm trying to remember how it was described in the books and failing. Suffice to say that each word is a Word of Power, with several possible uses based on the intention of the person invoking it. Most disciples of the order this monk founded take years to master a handful of words, even with being taught, while Alice keeps learning new ones by accident. The monks believe that she is the one prophesied who will discover new words that can be used to fight Maram, the dark mirrors of the Lotis that corrupt people and turn them towards darkness. To fight their influence, she uses the incantation Na Sadaru Lotis Ran* to enter their mindscapes, find what the darkness is feeding on/amplifying, and help that person deal with their issue so that the Maram no longer has a hold on them, making it vanquishable.

*Don't ask me how I remember that specific detail. I don't know.

[Pale Wolf]

Hm, Alice sounds interesting, though Mangafox doesn't seem to carry it.

I've seen more than one fic where they intentionally let the Dark Moon Clan attack because they knew it was going to happen and didn't want to create a paradox. What they did instead was made certain that the city had been as thoroughly evacuated as they could without tipping them off and arranged things so that those who remained were mostly able to survive in shelters. She could have sent the rest of her forces, including the Outers as well as all of the other magical troops, away simply so that her past self would not learn about them before it was time to learn about them.

It's one solution, but really, it's only one to go to if you really want Crystal Tokyo.

(As you might guess, I don't )

Any alteration of events could make it invalid, unless you stick with a predestination paradox. Personally, I prefer the future more fluid - Crystal Tokyo as one possible future, not the future.

[Wyrd]

Hm, Alice sounds interesting, though Mangafox doesn't seem to carry it.

I recall enjoying reading it in hard copy, but that was years ago.

It's one solution, but really, it's only one to go to if you really want Crystal Tokyo.

(As you might guess, I don't )

You have something against their architectural aesthetic? I don't consider Crystal Tokyo to be necessarily the Utopia(or Dystopia) that the Senshi interpreted it as being. We get very little information about it, most of it from enemies of it. In the manga(or was it the anime?), future Kamen tells them that it is a major hub of trade, but that doesn't mean all that much.

Let's say that whatever is causing the increase in monster attacks and magical children is found to be centered around the Tokyo area. Building a base of operations for their forces in Tokyo, or even replacing Tokyo with that base so that the only civilians present in the area are support staff for these forces makes sense for simple tactical response.

I have no objection to alternate futures and flexible timelines. I like them in general. I just don't see that a particular design for the buildings of Tokyo equates to a particular form of government. There are current projects looking at carbon nanotubes to build structures vastly bigger than anything currently in existence. I've seen one fic where someone comments that they have windows made out of pure diamond(manufactured, of course) simply because it was cheaper than glass because of the relative availability of carbon and silicates on the planet. Crystal Tokyo could be more an expression of new building technologies based on growing crystals to be more efficient, cheaper, more durable, or any combination of the above, than a representation of a fairy tale princess who rules the world with an iron fist.

I'm not pushing Crystal Tokyo here, I am merely trying to counter some of the arguments I've seen against it as not being quite as well thought out as some people think. I'm not a big fan of Manipulator Pluto and her drive to ensure that Crystal Tokyo happens, no matter the cost, either.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Here is a wikipedia link for Alice 19th. In this story, a monk a long time ago discovered a certain number(I forget how many, but it may be 19, hence the title) a words and their runic counterparts that... I'm trying to remember how it was described in the books and failing. Suffice to say that each word is a Word of Power, with several possible uses based on the intention of the person invoking it. Most disciples of the order this monk founded take years to master a handful of words, even with being taught, while Alice keeps learning new ones by accident. The monks believe that she is the one prophesied who will discover new words that can be used to fight Maram, the dark mirrors of the Lotis that corrupt people and turn them towards darkness. To fight their influence, she uses the incantation Na Sadaru Lotis Ran* to enter their mindscapes, find what the darkness is feeding on/amplifying, and help that person deal with their issue so that the Maram no longer has a hold on them, making it vanquishable.

That sounds a lot like Yume Tsukai. An interesting and unpredictable series, it feels as if it were written by a Japanese version of Sigmund Freud. The main characters could fit the Magical Girl (plus one boy) pattern, but they feel more like freelance Miko.