Top (?) Ten Rejected Ideas for Fire Emblem Stories

[mark_asphodel]

10) A "serious" Smash Bros story that's like, in-character and canon-compliant and explains things, man.

9) Boy, Minerva and the Whitewings do make some pretty hot Sailor Senshi.  

8) Reincarnation fic.  As in, characters with a suspicious resemblance to characters from other FE games really ARE just that, in some fashion.

7) That plotbunny featuring MyUnit!Chris as Ranma and Palla, Catria, and Est as the Tendo sisters.

6) Lingering illnesses in 'fic-- too much "consumption," not enough venereal disease.

5) Accident at the cloning lab.  Starring Anna.

4) A Western inspired by the Dylan song "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts."  Camus was the Jack of Hearts.

3) The drunk!fic to end all drunk!fics.

2) Evil Overlord Ephraim.  With sparkles.

1) Eva Peron!Serra brings down Ostia.

[No, really.  All of these reached the planning stage and some of them got to a second draft.]

Comments

[samuraiter]

How many have tried and failed to do #10, I wonder?

I wouldn't mind #9.

....

And I kinda, ah, did do #1, though it's not posted anywhere right now. :-) How could I resist an evil Serra? Might have to put that up again here at DW or something.

[mark_asphodel]

I need to see your take on evil!Serra, then.

[shimizu_hitomi]

I would love to see #1. o_O And #4. And I wouldn't mind #9 either... XD

[mark_asphodel]

Hah. The Sailor Senshi idea is sure popular!

#4 is a delightful but frustrating thing to grapple with. The big problem, as in many Archanea AUs, is dealing with Marth.

As for #1... I so want to finish that. -_-

[myaru]

I think it's a real shame that #6 hasn't made it to print, and I would read #9 in a heartbeat.

[mark_asphodel]

Hahah.

The problem with #6 was that I didn't want to inflict something yukky on a character I didn't much care for, because I felt I'd likely be cheap-shotting them (consciously or not). And whenever I devised a scenario to inflict it on a character I liked, I felt all icky and squirmy inside. :/

Still want to do it, though. It needs doing.

[lyndis]

Are these YOUR rejected ideas, or ideas in general?

Either way, fun list.

3) The drunk!fic to end all drunk!fics. <--must know what this entails.

[mark_asphodel]

Mine.

<--must know what this entails.

More Archanea darkfic. :/

My excuse was that Hardin actually does start drinking in canon after he realizes Nyna doesn't love him and that made it easy for Gharnef to take possession of him.

[raphiael]

#6: Consumption and excessively pretty childbirth deaths! Husband sits pensively outside while clerics Do Things to make his baby happen. Clerics shuffle out, grim faced... "The child is well, my lord, but... your lady..." Commence bittersweet baby snuggles.

I mean, I've never known anyone who died giving birth, but it's not so much the commonality as it is the formulaic telling of it that gets me, both in fic and elsewhere.

Also unsurprising mention that #2 sounds A+.

[mark_asphodel]

I mean, I've never known anyone who died giving birth, but it's not so much the commonality as it is the formulaic telling of it that gets me, both in fic and elsewhere.

Yeah. I mean, crack a history book, guys. Childbirth tragedies aren't cookie-cutter. Sure, you had prolonged labors that resulted in a healthy baby and a dying mother, but you also had births and deliveries that went perfectly until infection or hemorrhage set in (sometimes days later), and since infant mortality outpaces maternal mortality, statistically you're a lot more likely to end up with a dead baby as well, not a perfect little Lilina or Roy or RenaisTwins. Or you had cases like the birth of Napoleon I's son wherein the kid was given up for dead to save the mother and both ended up surviving.

And in any event, you also had husbands left in a state of complete shock, not in any state for bittersweet baby snuggles. Just because mothers and babies died more often doesn't mean that their families were resigned to the fact or totes OK with the whole thing.

Also unsurprising mention that #2 sounds A+.

It's a complete bitch to write. Ephraim is hard. Very hard. AU!Ephraim is easier than the real thing for some reason.

[raphiael]

I guess I can understand why the hands-off treatment of it like that is popular. I mean, it's easy. But I don't even read much pairing fic, and it's still something I've seen so often that I just don't see why it would still be seen as being worth writing at all.

(But then, the same is true of entirely too many fic premises.)

Aha, yeah, there's definitely a reason I've only written tied to Ephraim's POV once. And I think it's among the worst things I've put out there.

[mark_asphodel]

I guess I can understand why the hands-off treatment of it like that is popular. I mean, it's easy

It's sanitized. It keeps the tragedy at both a physical and emotional distance. I mean, if you actually wrote an Eliwood/Fiora story wherein Fiora had an apparently successful birth and everyone was happy and then she bled to death in the night and Eliwood was totally not prepared for it... that'd be a difficult thing to write, IMO. As much as some of us sadist authors like to torture characters, I think we generally like to be in control of the torture, and some 'fic situations just go places we don't want to go.

I know there's quite a few stories I've abandoned and there's one I'm struggling with now for that reason.

Also, I looked up "Remain In Light" (the Ephraim story) and the current draft consists of one sentence fragment. Yeesh.

[quasiemblem]

If #5 were to show up at ff.net, I would click on it out of morbid curiosity.

[mark_asphodel]

Heh.

It was my original explanation for how Chrom came into being.