Yuletide 2023
Oct. 15th, 2023 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marsdragonBack to endless copy-paste
General notes first:
I left all the character request fields blank so just do whatever you want. Include characters, don't include characters, add original characters, whatever.
I like: gen, worldbuilding, and noncon*, so let that guide you as you will. You pretty much can't go wrong by investigating some aspect of the world in a canon-typical fashion. I also enjoy canon-divergence AUs (what if this happened instead of that), unusual formats (epistolary, in-universe documents, interactive fiction, etc), in-universe history, and thinking of how game mechanics work in-universe. Basically I like hanging out in other worlds and seeing things from that perspective.
*prompts not listed here for brevity, but check out my nonconathon letters for ideas. For reference, Bloodstained is my new Castlevania.
I dislike: non-canon-divergence AUs (coffeeshop, etc), fluff with zero conflict or tension, M/f noncon, sex/gender headcanons, characters being passive or weepy messes, A/B/O, and focus on real-world issues.
In general I try to not be too demanding, and if you want to write something that ignores all my prompts, go for it. I'd rather you write something you enjoy than force yourself into a prompt you don't care about. Everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed and yes I know what I'm setting myself up for here.
Check the other entries for previous letters; I've asked for all these canons before and would still be into all those prompts. If I didn't ask for something again here that doesn't mean I don't want it, it means I forgot.
And yes, I have written some of these ideas myself. I think they're good ideas and want another take! Don't let any sort of previous fic discourage you, I still want everything or I wouldn't have asked.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
Miriam
Hachi
Robert
Zangetsu
Prompts:
Feel free to bring in anyone not-nominated, especially monsters. I love 'em all.
The little in-between stage animations in CotM2 are wonderful, and something playing off them would be great. Or just anything about getting through the game, character interaction in downtime, etc. Or anything about how they got back from the moon/what they did afterwards.
Hachi is a corgi with a mech suit, which is delightful. How'd he lose his leg? Where'd he get the robot armor? How does he know Zangetsu, and how did Zangetsu not know his name ahead of time? He's getting petted by Miriam when both teams join up, does he hang around with her later?
Miriam is still a Shardbinder and hanging out with Gebel, but everyone's circumstances are so different in CotM I feel like there's still plenty to explore. What's she been up to? Does Johannes exist in CotM-land? She loves animals (Hachi, moon rabbits) so something involving that would be nice.
Robert takes over Zangetsu's job of being suspicious of everyone and everything in CotM2, but he eventually warms up to the rest of the cast. Something exploring that, or how he reacts to the CotM1 crew, would be fun. Or how this ordinary human soldier got into the business of fighting demons. Why does he hate the church so much?
I really like Zangetsu's stint as demon emperor, and think the idea of him becoming a demon after fighting them for so long is fascinating. (his castle rules too) Anything about his becoming a demon, his connection with the castle, other demons, etc would be great. Lean into that bad end. (This is also a good prompt for Miriam fic) And it was only on my most recent replay of Nightmare mode that I remembered he gets teleported toMegaman 3 Gunvolt A MYSTERIOUS FUTURE CITY at the end. I'd love something with him trying to navigate such a completely new world, maybe with a side of sci-fi demon hunting.
Or backstory fic with how he got the moon's curse, how he knows everyone, interacting with other characters, etc. Does he remember Gemory from CotM1 in 2? (BECAUSE I SURE DID)
And I'm always for worldbuilding, so anything you want to explore there is good. And demons. I love demons. Stuff with monsters is great. The stages are also beautiful, so something on where all these castles came from and who decorated them so nicely would be cool.
How to experience:
The games are on every modern platform and are about 10-15 bucks each, less with a sale. CotM1 is a fun, fair little platformer that should take about two hours to play through. CotM2 takes the gloves off on stage 2 and doesn't let up. But it does have some pretty good difficulty select options.
Or watch these videos:
Curse of the Moon: Normal, Nightmare, kill allies, ignore allies
Curse of the Moon 2: Episode 1, episode 2, episode EX, episode final, secret ending
Some director comments on the CotM2 characters
Fatal Fury
Terry
Rock
Geese
Kain
I wanted to add Billy to the list, but they'd only let me pick four characters. Feel free to bring him in as much as you'd like. Blue Mary and Yamazaki can show up too, I just don't have any prompts for them. Bring in anyone you want, Fatal Fury has a great cast. Axel Hawk? Franco Bash? Bob Wilson? Sky's the limit.
So most of these are very directly related to the main plot and all of them have some sort of connection to each other. I'd love to see those explored more. Kain trying to recruit Billy? Geese and his rogue body double? Just pick some characters and throw them together. I'm always here for more stuff exploring the fact that Terry adopted the son of the man he killed, or Grant and Kain's friendship, etc etc.
Exploring Southtown a bit would be really fun. It's a setting that really gets built up over the course of the games, so I'd love to see anything expanding on it. Local issues, tourist's guides, reporters trying to chase characters down for interviews, why there's a Second South a few miles east...go for it.
Or just characters and the weird bits of bio that SNK gave them. I really like that SNK gives everyone favorite foods, music, hobbies, skills, etc, so just pick one of those. Does Kain read the high-brow stuff his character design would suggest, or is it all doorstopper fantasy novels? Rock learning to play guitar, Geese picking up and dropping a dozen hobbies, Terry evolving from his regular series bio to his MOW bio...it's all good.
I really like how fighting games can get kind of "choose your own canon" with each character having contradictory stories, so feel free to explore that. What if Gato won Maximum Mayhem? I bet Kain and Rock would be mad.
And if all else fails, there are two ten-year timeskips where everyone would've been wandering around. Explore that.
How to experience:
The covered games are Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury 3, Real Bout Fatal Fury, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. These are all available via Arcade Archives or by emulation (MAME, WinKwaks), but be warned: SNK knew damn well their job was to eat your quarters and tuned the difficulty accordingly. WinKwaks has a cheat file that will help, but MAME or Arcade Archives are just set the difficulty down and do your best.
Memories of Stray Wolves will catch you up on the important stuff up to Mark of the Wolves.
Playthroughs:
Fatal Fury: Terry
Fatal Fury 3: Terry, Geese
Real Bout Fatal Fury: Terry, Geese
Garou: Mark of the Wolves: Rock, Terry, Kain
Additional wrinkle: SNK got...creative with their translations in the 90s. I've done a lot of comparison work on my personal site, and rest assured that Mark of the Wolves doesn't really lose meaning so much as tone/phrasing.
Just ignore King of Fighters, it's a different continuity. ...but fans mix them up constantly so if you look at the wiki they're not going to really bother splitting out the timelines. Sorry.
Giant Robo
Genya
Komei
Alberto
Hanzui
Sunny
Daisaku
Ginrei
Worldbuilding
Prompts:
Giant Robo is my favorite anime of all time. I will take anything. I would especially love worldbuilding and investigation into all those great characters who show up for a little bit and steal the show (read: almost all the Magnificent 10 and Komei).
The setting is great, anything exploring the setting would be great. Something exploring IPO and BF as these giant organizations and how that actually works is also great. Having to project manage a bunch of psychics as part of a minor operation to extend BF's global reach sounds like hell and also fun to read about. Promotion structures! How do you qualify for the Magnificent 10? Who signs off on that?
Any sort of character interaction is also cool. Most of these characters would at least be work acquaintances (Genya's the odd one out here, but he can hang out with Komei), and seeing them in that context would be interesting. We never got to see Alberto and Sunny interact in the OVA, but I'd like to see that too! They have some sort of telepathic connection, there's room to explore there. Does it go both ways? When did it show up? Caused any trouble in the past?
For Sunny as well, having this kid in the upper echelons of BF is interesting. What's that like? How does being part of BF as a child differ from being part of the IPO, which is definitely happening (Taisou and Tetsugyuu talk about it, not to mention Daisaku's entire thing). And if you want to bring in original Sally's goofy Loony Tunes magic I'm all for that.
For Genya, he can only really hang out with Komei, but I'm interested in his life during the ten years between Bashtarlle and the OVA. His fall into darkness, getting manipulated by Komei, misunderstanding everything...there's a lot there. Did he ever even try to look for Farmelle/Ginrei?
I like Ginrei a lot too! Her ten year gap is also interesting, especially right after the tragedy. I'm always down for some Ginrei special-type content, and by the way, the Ginrei specials imply a ton of fun adventures for her. Or something about her and Shizuma, especially when she gets the mission to protect him.
Daisaku has...well, basically similar prompts to everyone else, but in addition him and Tetsugyu hanging out afterwards could be a lot of fun. Or something about rebuilding in the aftermath, where Daisaku would be a good viewpoint to the IPO side of things.
Any sort of backstory, more adventures, more anything. I just want more Giant Robo, I love it so much.
How to experience:
US Bluray available for purchase.
...or you can torrent it.
Laserdisk linear notes, with lots of extra details about the characters and setting.
Extra info that's literally friend-of-a-friend, so take or leave it as you will. Might inspire some ideas, though.
Psychic Force
Burn Griffith
Carlo Belfrond
Keith Evans
Patricia "Patty" Myers
Regina Belfrond
Richard Wong
Setsuna
Wendy Ryan
Prompts:
Psychic Force is the game I played when I was 13 and it burned itself onto my soul. So like Giant Robo, I will take anything for this. I'm more into the characters than the world here (for once) but if you want to expand on the weird 90s-kind of cyberpunky world they've got, go for it. I'd love to see an outside view of all the nonsense that goes on in the game.
And as usual I'm all for backstories, or explorations of powers/gameplay systems, or something about what the characters do after any of their wildly depressing endings, or random characters interacting with each other. I kind of love how no one in Psychic Force is able to exchange two lines without it turning into a fight to the death, but surely they have to have normal conversations sometime. Wendy and Patty probably could, if no one else. And what everyone's up to in 2011 is good too.
All of the characters are young enough to still have parents (uh, sorry Patty) (okay, Wong might've killed his, but he might've not!) and that's an interesting set of outsider viewpoints right there. Not to mention Patty/Setsuna/Wong's actual backstories, which I'm all for getting into. What happened to, say, Keith's parents? Does he ever even think about them? Wendy's parents, who just had both their daughters disappear? Setsuna's family?
I love the whole "choose your own canon" aspect to fighting games, so please, feel free to grab anyone's story mode and work off of that. Burn waking up after Wong or Carlo's ending? Wendy after her PF1 ending? Patty and her weird time-loop? It's all good.
So Burn/Keith is like the one place in this letter with actually shippy prompts, so if that's what you're looking to write then I'll happily read anything for those two. These two engraved "crying over the corpse of the beloved person you just killed" onto my heart, and if you can figure out how to make them happy then that's also great. Hey, maybe they finally sort themselves out, you never know. Either of them trying to get along after their endings: also good. Burn after Wendy's ending is also really interesting and the game never addresses the dead best friend in the room for obvious reasons, but that's what fanfic is for, right?
Wong is my favorite evil scumbag and I love how his entire existence consists of being smug and screwing people over. Also that he has an angsty past and it's being a bastard. Also he's about the only character to get happy endings, which is so great. Please continue that. One exception: it's not in my nonconathon letters, but I played Setsuna's story mode for that ending cutscene a lot back in the day. Setsuna can take (extremely temporary) advantage.
And speaking of Setsuna...I never thought all that much of him, but recently replaying and doing a bunch of translations gave me a slightly different view. He's a dumbass edgelord who is casually out-eviled by everyone around him, including the teenager who spent the entire last game crying. No matter how hard he tries to do anything he always fails. And he's got some weird daddy issues that are only ever talked about in Japanese. I dunno, the whole thing started to feel a little poignant to me, and I'd like to see him explored more.
Carlo and Regina and trying to hold the cause together while Keith sits around and mopes about his boyfriend! I've always liked Carlo and his inability to sacrifice what's most precious to him (unlike Keith), and Regina deserves the chance to live for once. She also seems to have a very different idea of her and Carlo's relationship than he does, and I'd love to see that explored a bit. (by which I mean: what if Regina just fucking went for it) I'd also be interested in seeing them bounce of other former members of NOA before everything falls apart, like Wendy, Gudeath, etc. They all know each other, and like I said, they have to have had normal conversations at some point.
And then I just like Wendy and Patty and would be interested in exploring their families a bit more (Chris! Patty's mysterious mom!), or seeing what they're up to before/after the game, or hanging out with each other because again, they're probably the only people in the cast that could have a conversation without murdering each other. Patty and her odd friendship with Might would also be interesting. They met when she saved him from a life-threatening wound, but then kept hanging out? When did she find out his mission is to kill everyone like her?
How to experience:
I wrote up a guide post, so take a look at the links to playthroughs. There's also my translation site, which includes manual information and character profiles, so you might want to keep that on-hand while looking up playthroughs.
SaGa Frontier
Gina
Ildon
Gen
T260G
Prompts:
So in Asellus' Half-Mystic ending, Ildon credits Gina with teaching him how to not be a jerk anymore. When did they exchange a single word with each other? I am wildly curious how that entire thing happened. I'm picturing Asellus dumping Ildon on Gina afterwards, but that's because I think Gina dealing with a grumpy Mystic sleeping on her couch is funny. I'm not big into shipping them, for the record (Gina likes Asellus anyway).
More generally, I like Gina and she's in an interesting position after the story. Either she's a regular human who keeps having these weirdo vampires drop in on her and her family, or she gets to be the first Princess of the new Mystic Lord...and we know how that one ends. Lots of room to explore here.
Then I just like Gen and T260G's relationship. Robot and samurai buddies to the end. Some downtime on the mission, getting involved in other character's stories, exploring the wonderfully weird world they live in...I'll take whatever you feel like. They've both lost their homes very permanently, and now they're on an adventure. Anything with them bouncing off each other is great.
If you want to mix and match the characters, that's fine too. I don't have any specific ideas for that, but leave it to you.
How to experience: Remastered is available on every platform, and each scenario is pretty short. It's worth playing.
LP link for Asellus' scenario
All three of Asellus' endings
LP link for T260G's scenario
Voltes V
Gou Kenichi
Gou Kentarou
Heinel
Prompts:
A lot of my specific prompts are for post-series, because Voltes leaves a lot of room for expansion at the end, but as usual I'm always down for some backstory. Especially Dr. Gou/Lah Gohl and Heinel, who have the more interesting ones. It's interesting in how they both end up screwed over by Boazanian society, but react to it in very different ways. There's some room for comparing and contrasting there. Or I keep kicking around (and not writing) the idea of the AU where Dr. Gou accidentally runs across the town where Heinel is growing up in that pre-series gap and there is a Dramatic Meeting.
And then the last episode dumps a bunch of revelations on the cast before ending ten minutes later. So something that adds a bit more character depth there would be nice, with the survivors sitting down and dealing with things afterwards. Like man, Dr. Gou finds his long-lost eldest after 20 years and they're enemies, then the kid switches sides, then kills himself, all within five minutes. Dude is probably going to want a stiff drink after that. Kenichi too.
Or Heinel miraculously survives and everyone has to deal with that too. I'm still bummed that neither SRW or Victory Five let Dr. Gou hug all his kids, let's fix that. But speaking of Victory Five, Heinel going out to sushi with his brothers was great, that is the kind of goofy nonsense I desire. Let someone grab Heinel's horns. Make Heinel deal with some "and now what" after having his worldview upended and also killing an emperor.
Or Dr. Gou/Lah Gohl dealing with the hard part of revolutions: keeping everything together after you won. There's almost inevitably going to be a civil war, and rewriting society is rife with trouble. I'm okay with a happier ending than an execution or a revolutionary dictatorship, but let's be real. Changing the social and political order of a space empire is not going to happen quickly or smoothly. Governing is hard. There are going to be multiple competing factions, especially after victory. How does all that work out?
Or some of his backstory, either on Boazan or trying to adjust to Earth. Was there anything he missed about Boazan? He had a pretty good deal there for awhile. Or trying to relate to all the common hornless when he grew up as literally the crown prince. That's gonna cause some friction.
Kenichi and the rest dealing with the post-series fallout on Earth is good too. Now there's no invading aliens to deal with, how long can the various nations keep the peace? How about setting up diplomatic relations with Boazan now there's a new regime? How does it feel to be a hero for fighting and (as far as Earth knows) killing your brother? Any interest in engaging with the Boazanian side of his heritage now that there's not a war on (and the social problems are...being worked on (you can assume they're just fixed in this case))?
And as always I'd love plenty of worldbuilding, so feel free to put way more thought into Boazanian society than any of the writers did. I have! It's fun! Fashion, art, history, religion, various customs before and after the series...I love worldbuilding stuff like this. How do stage plays work, especially when actors are usually lower-status? What are the weird edge cases in the social order? (there are always weird edge cases) Or how the events of the series get written down in history would also be fascinating to me.
How to experience:
Buy the Blu-Ray, or watch on archive.org. This does have an issue where episode 24 is labeled as episode 40 and every other episode after 23 is off because of that. So after you watch episode 23, watch episode 40 (actually 24), and then watch labeled episode 24 (actually episode 25).
General notes first:
I left all the character request fields blank so just do whatever you want. Include characters, don't include characters, add original characters, whatever.
I like: gen, worldbuilding, and noncon*, so let that guide you as you will. You pretty much can't go wrong by investigating some aspect of the world in a canon-typical fashion. I also enjoy canon-divergence AUs (what if this happened instead of that), unusual formats (epistolary, in-universe documents, interactive fiction, etc), in-universe history, and thinking of how game mechanics work in-universe. Basically I like hanging out in other worlds and seeing things from that perspective.
*prompts not listed here for brevity, but check out my nonconathon letters for ideas. For reference, Bloodstained is my new Castlevania.
I dislike: non-canon-divergence AUs (coffeeshop, etc), fluff with zero conflict or tension, M/f noncon, sex/gender headcanons, characters being passive or weepy messes, A/B/O, and focus on real-world issues.
In general I try to not be too demanding, and if you want to write something that ignores all my prompts, go for it. I'd rather you write something you enjoy than force yourself into a prompt you don't care about. Everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed and yes I know what I'm setting myself up for here.
Check the other entries for previous letters; I've asked for all these canons before and would still be into all those prompts. If I didn't ask for something again here that doesn't mean I don't want it, it means I forgot.
And yes, I have written some of these ideas myself. I think they're good ideas and want another take! Don't let any sort of previous fic discourage you, I still want everything or I wouldn't have asked.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
Miriam
Hachi
Robert
Zangetsu
Prompts:
Feel free to bring in anyone not-nominated, especially monsters. I love 'em all.
The little in-between stage animations in CotM2 are wonderful, and something playing off them would be great. Or just anything about getting through the game, character interaction in downtime, etc. Or anything about how they got back from the moon/what they did afterwards.
Hachi is a corgi with a mech suit, which is delightful. How'd he lose his leg? Where'd he get the robot armor? How does he know Zangetsu, and how did Zangetsu not know his name ahead of time? He's getting petted by Miriam when both teams join up, does he hang around with her later?
Miriam is still a Shardbinder and hanging out with Gebel, but everyone's circumstances are so different in CotM I feel like there's still plenty to explore. What's she been up to? Does Johannes exist in CotM-land? She loves animals (Hachi, moon rabbits) so something involving that would be nice.
Robert takes over Zangetsu's job of being suspicious of everyone and everything in CotM2, but he eventually warms up to the rest of the cast. Something exploring that, or how he reacts to the CotM1 crew, would be fun. Or how this ordinary human soldier got into the business of fighting demons. Why does he hate the church so much?
I really like Zangetsu's stint as demon emperor, and think the idea of him becoming a demon after fighting them for so long is fascinating. (his castle rules too) Anything about his becoming a demon, his connection with the castle, other demons, etc would be great. Lean into that bad end. (This is also a good prompt for Miriam fic) And it was only on my most recent replay of Nightmare mode that I remembered he gets teleported to
Or backstory fic with how he got the moon's curse, how he knows everyone, interacting with other characters, etc. Does he remember Gemory from CotM1 in 2? (BECAUSE I SURE DID)
And I'm always for worldbuilding, so anything you want to explore there is good. And demons. I love demons. Stuff with monsters is great. The stages are also beautiful, so something on where all these castles came from and who decorated them so nicely would be cool.
How to experience:
The games are on every modern platform and are about 10-15 bucks each, less with a sale. CotM1 is a fun, fair little platformer that should take about two hours to play through. CotM2 takes the gloves off on stage 2 and doesn't let up. But it does have some pretty good difficulty select options.
Or watch these videos:
Curse of the Moon: Normal, Nightmare, kill allies, ignore allies
Curse of the Moon 2: Episode 1, episode 2, episode EX, episode final, secret ending
Some director comments on the CotM2 characters
Fatal Fury
Terry
Rock
Geese
Kain
I wanted to add Billy to the list, but they'd only let me pick four characters. Feel free to bring him in as much as you'd like. Blue Mary and Yamazaki can show up too, I just don't have any prompts for them. Bring in anyone you want, Fatal Fury has a great cast. Axel Hawk? Franco Bash? Bob Wilson? Sky's the limit.
So most of these are very directly related to the main plot and all of them have some sort of connection to each other. I'd love to see those explored more. Kain trying to recruit Billy? Geese and his rogue body double? Just pick some characters and throw them together. I'm always here for more stuff exploring the fact that Terry adopted the son of the man he killed, or Grant and Kain's friendship, etc etc.
Exploring Southtown a bit would be really fun. It's a setting that really gets built up over the course of the games, so I'd love to see anything expanding on it. Local issues, tourist's guides, reporters trying to chase characters down for interviews, why there's a Second South a few miles east...go for it.
Or just characters and the weird bits of bio that SNK gave them. I really like that SNK gives everyone favorite foods, music, hobbies, skills, etc, so just pick one of those. Does Kain read the high-brow stuff his character design would suggest, or is it all doorstopper fantasy novels? Rock learning to play guitar, Geese picking up and dropping a dozen hobbies, Terry evolving from his regular series bio to his MOW bio...it's all good.
I really like how fighting games can get kind of "choose your own canon" with each character having contradictory stories, so feel free to explore that. What if Gato won Maximum Mayhem? I bet Kain and Rock would be mad.
And if all else fails, there are two ten-year timeskips where everyone would've been wandering around. Explore that.
How to experience:
The covered games are Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury 3, Real Bout Fatal Fury, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. These are all available via Arcade Archives or by emulation (MAME, WinKwaks), but be warned: SNK knew damn well their job was to eat your quarters and tuned the difficulty accordingly. WinKwaks has a cheat file that will help, but MAME or Arcade Archives are just set the difficulty down and do your best.
Memories of Stray Wolves will catch you up on the important stuff up to Mark of the Wolves.
Playthroughs:
Fatal Fury: Terry
Fatal Fury 3: Terry, Geese
Real Bout Fatal Fury: Terry, Geese
Garou: Mark of the Wolves: Rock, Terry, Kain
Additional wrinkle: SNK got...creative with their translations in the 90s. I've done a lot of comparison work on my personal site, and rest assured that Mark of the Wolves doesn't really lose meaning so much as tone/phrasing.
Just ignore King of Fighters, it's a different continuity. ...but fans mix them up constantly so if you look at the wiki they're not going to really bother splitting out the timelines. Sorry.
Giant Robo
Genya
Komei
Alberto
Hanzui
Sunny
Daisaku
Ginrei
Worldbuilding
Prompts:
Giant Robo is my favorite anime of all time. I will take anything. I would especially love worldbuilding and investigation into all those great characters who show up for a little bit and steal the show (read: almost all the Magnificent 10 and Komei).
The setting is great, anything exploring the setting would be great. Something exploring IPO and BF as these giant organizations and how that actually works is also great. Having to project manage a bunch of psychics as part of a minor operation to extend BF's global reach sounds like hell and also fun to read about. Promotion structures! How do you qualify for the Magnificent 10? Who signs off on that?
Any sort of character interaction is also cool. Most of these characters would at least be work acquaintances (Genya's the odd one out here, but he can hang out with Komei), and seeing them in that context would be interesting. We never got to see Alberto and Sunny interact in the OVA, but I'd like to see that too! They have some sort of telepathic connection, there's room to explore there. Does it go both ways? When did it show up? Caused any trouble in the past?
For Sunny as well, having this kid in the upper echelons of BF is interesting. What's that like? How does being part of BF as a child differ from being part of the IPO, which is definitely happening (Taisou and Tetsugyuu talk about it, not to mention Daisaku's entire thing). And if you want to bring in original Sally's goofy Loony Tunes magic I'm all for that.
For Genya, he can only really hang out with Komei, but I'm interested in his life during the ten years between Bashtarlle and the OVA. His fall into darkness, getting manipulated by Komei, misunderstanding everything...there's a lot there. Did he ever even try to look for Farmelle/Ginrei?
I like Ginrei a lot too! Her ten year gap is also interesting, especially right after the tragedy. I'm always down for some Ginrei special-type content, and by the way, the Ginrei specials imply a ton of fun adventures for her. Or something about her and Shizuma, especially when she gets the mission to protect him.
Daisaku has...well, basically similar prompts to everyone else, but in addition him and Tetsugyu hanging out afterwards could be a lot of fun. Or something about rebuilding in the aftermath, where Daisaku would be a good viewpoint to the IPO side of things.
Any sort of backstory, more adventures, more anything. I just want more Giant Robo, I love it so much.
How to experience:
US Bluray available for purchase.
...or you can torrent it.
Laserdisk linear notes, with lots of extra details about the characters and setting.
Extra info that's literally friend-of-a-friend, so take or leave it as you will. Might inspire some ideas, though.
Psychic Force
Burn Griffith
Carlo Belfrond
Keith Evans
Patricia "Patty" Myers
Regina Belfrond
Richard Wong
Setsuna
Wendy Ryan
Prompts:
Psychic Force is the game I played when I was 13 and it burned itself onto my soul. So like Giant Robo, I will take anything for this. I'm more into the characters than the world here (for once) but if you want to expand on the weird 90s-kind of cyberpunky world they've got, go for it. I'd love to see an outside view of all the nonsense that goes on in the game.
And as usual I'm all for backstories, or explorations of powers/gameplay systems, or something about what the characters do after any of their wildly depressing endings, or random characters interacting with each other. I kind of love how no one in Psychic Force is able to exchange two lines without it turning into a fight to the death, but surely they have to have normal conversations sometime. Wendy and Patty probably could, if no one else. And what everyone's up to in 2011 is good too.
All of the characters are young enough to still have parents (uh, sorry Patty) (okay, Wong might've killed his, but he might've not!) and that's an interesting set of outsider viewpoints right there. Not to mention Patty/Setsuna/Wong's actual backstories, which I'm all for getting into. What happened to, say, Keith's parents? Does he ever even think about them? Wendy's parents, who just had both their daughters disappear? Setsuna's family?
I love the whole "choose your own canon" aspect to fighting games, so please, feel free to grab anyone's story mode and work off of that. Burn waking up after Wong or Carlo's ending? Wendy after her PF1 ending? Patty and her weird time-loop? It's all good.
So Burn/Keith is like the one place in this letter with actually shippy prompts, so if that's what you're looking to write then I'll happily read anything for those two. These two engraved "crying over the corpse of the beloved person you just killed" onto my heart, and if you can figure out how to make them happy then that's also great. Hey, maybe they finally sort themselves out, you never know. Either of them trying to get along after their endings: also good. Burn after Wendy's ending is also really interesting and the game never addresses the dead best friend in the room for obvious reasons, but that's what fanfic is for, right?
Wong is my favorite evil scumbag and I love how his entire existence consists of being smug and screwing people over. Also that he has an angsty past and it's being a bastard. Also he's about the only character to get happy endings, which is so great. Please continue that. One exception: it's not in my nonconathon letters, but I played Setsuna's story mode for that ending cutscene a lot back in the day. Setsuna can take (extremely temporary) advantage.
And speaking of Setsuna...I never thought all that much of him, but recently replaying and doing a bunch of translations gave me a slightly different view. He's a dumbass edgelord who is casually out-eviled by everyone around him, including the teenager who spent the entire last game crying. No matter how hard he tries to do anything he always fails. And he's got some weird daddy issues that are only ever talked about in Japanese. I dunno, the whole thing started to feel a little poignant to me, and I'd like to see him explored more.
Carlo and Regina and trying to hold the cause together while Keith sits around and mopes about his boyfriend! I've always liked Carlo and his inability to sacrifice what's most precious to him (unlike Keith), and Regina deserves the chance to live for once. She also seems to have a very different idea of her and Carlo's relationship than he does, and I'd love to see that explored a bit. (by which I mean: what if Regina just fucking went for it) I'd also be interested in seeing them bounce of other former members of NOA before everything falls apart, like Wendy, Gudeath, etc. They all know each other, and like I said, they have to have had normal conversations at some point.
And then I just like Wendy and Patty and would be interested in exploring their families a bit more (Chris! Patty's mysterious mom!), or seeing what they're up to before/after the game, or hanging out with each other because again, they're probably the only people in the cast that could have a conversation without murdering each other. Patty and her odd friendship with Might would also be interesting. They met when she saved him from a life-threatening wound, but then kept hanging out? When did she find out his mission is to kill everyone like her?
How to experience:
I wrote up a guide post, so take a look at the links to playthroughs. There's also my translation site, which includes manual information and character profiles, so you might want to keep that on-hand while looking up playthroughs.
SaGa Frontier
Gina
Ildon
Gen
T260G
Prompts:
So in Asellus' Half-Mystic ending, Ildon credits Gina with teaching him how to not be a jerk anymore. When did they exchange a single word with each other? I am wildly curious how that entire thing happened. I'm picturing Asellus dumping Ildon on Gina afterwards, but that's because I think Gina dealing with a grumpy Mystic sleeping on her couch is funny. I'm not big into shipping them, for the record (Gina likes Asellus anyway).
More generally, I like Gina and she's in an interesting position after the story. Either she's a regular human who keeps having these weirdo vampires drop in on her and her family, or she gets to be the first Princess of the new Mystic Lord...and we know how that one ends. Lots of room to explore here.
Then I just like Gen and T260G's relationship. Robot and samurai buddies to the end. Some downtime on the mission, getting involved in other character's stories, exploring the wonderfully weird world they live in...I'll take whatever you feel like. They've both lost their homes very permanently, and now they're on an adventure. Anything with them bouncing off each other is great.
If you want to mix and match the characters, that's fine too. I don't have any specific ideas for that, but leave it to you.
How to experience: Remastered is available on every platform, and each scenario is pretty short. It's worth playing.
LP link for Asellus' scenario
All three of Asellus' endings
LP link for T260G's scenario
Voltes V
Gou Kenichi
Gou Kentarou
Heinel
Prompts:
A lot of my specific prompts are for post-series, because Voltes leaves a lot of room for expansion at the end, but as usual I'm always down for some backstory. Especially Dr. Gou/Lah Gohl and Heinel, who have the more interesting ones. It's interesting in how they both end up screwed over by Boazanian society, but react to it in very different ways. There's some room for comparing and contrasting there. Or I keep kicking around (and not writing) the idea of the AU where Dr. Gou accidentally runs across the town where Heinel is growing up in that pre-series gap and there is a Dramatic Meeting.
And then the last episode dumps a bunch of revelations on the cast before ending ten minutes later. So something that adds a bit more character depth there would be nice, with the survivors sitting down and dealing with things afterwards. Like man, Dr. Gou finds his long-lost eldest after 20 years and they're enemies, then the kid switches sides, then kills himself, all within five minutes. Dude is probably going to want a stiff drink after that. Kenichi too.
Or Heinel miraculously survives and everyone has to deal with that too. I'm still bummed that neither SRW or Victory Five let Dr. Gou hug all his kids, let's fix that. But speaking of Victory Five, Heinel going out to sushi with his brothers was great, that is the kind of goofy nonsense I desire. Let someone grab Heinel's horns. Make Heinel deal with some "and now what" after having his worldview upended and also killing an emperor.
Or Dr. Gou/Lah Gohl dealing with the hard part of revolutions: keeping everything together after you won. There's almost inevitably going to be a civil war, and rewriting society is rife with trouble. I'm okay with a happier ending than an execution or a revolutionary dictatorship, but let's be real. Changing the social and political order of a space empire is not going to happen quickly or smoothly. Governing is hard. There are going to be multiple competing factions, especially after victory. How does all that work out?
Or some of his backstory, either on Boazan or trying to adjust to Earth. Was there anything he missed about Boazan? He had a pretty good deal there for awhile. Or trying to relate to all the common hornless when he grew up as literally the crown prince. That's gonna cause some friction.
Kenichi and the rest dealing with the post-series fallout on Earth is good too. Now there's no invading aliens to deal with, how long can the various nations keep the peace? How about setting up diplomatic relations with Boazan now there's a new regime? How does it feel to be a hero for fighting and (as far as Earth knows) killing your brother? Any interest in engaging with the Boazanian side of his heritage now that there's not a war on (and the social problems are...being worked on (you can assume they're just fixed in this case))?
And as always I'd love plenty of worldbuilding, so feel free to put way more thought into Boazanian society than any of the writers did. I have! It's fun! Fashion, art, history, religion, various customs before and after the series...I love worldbuilding stuff like this. How do stage plays work, especially when actors are usually lower-status? What are the weird edge cases in the social order? (there are always weird edge cases) Or how the events of the series get written down in history would also be fascinating to me.
How to experience:
Buy the Blu-Ray, or watch on archive.org. This does have an issue where episode 24 is labeled as episode 40 and every other episode after 23 is off because of that. So after you watch episode 23, watch episode 40 (actually 24), and then watch labeled episode 24 (actually episode 25).
