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Reimagine Works of Fiction If They Had Been Written By Different Authors

MJ12 Commando

MJ12 Commando

Shadow Cabal Barristerminator
Arbitrator
If you give two different authors a chance to make a work of fiction with similar plot beats and starting scenarios, the end result is likely to still be very different. So what if we imagined a world where the same famous or infamous works of fiction still existed, but were written by entirely different people?

For this little forum game, people should post an author/work combination, and others will respond with two things:
1. What they think that work would look like;
2. Another prompt with an author/work combination.

I'll start off with a prompt.

Someone sell or unsell me on the famous and incredibly profitable visual novel, Fate/Stay Night, by renowned author Dan Simmons.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Someone sell or unsell me on the famous and incredibly profitable visual novel, Fate/Stay Night, by renowned author Dan Simmons.
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  • As this is published in 2004, this is post-9/11 Simmons. RIP to the Hyperion Cantos fans
  • Long sections of the novel are written in the exact same style as Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and yes that means in exact Middle English
  • Shirou is a red head because he has Western blood. It will later be revealed he is a direct descendant of King Arthur
  • Shirou having inexplicable knowledge of myths is explained by him being an avid reader of Western canon, as he finds it more interesting than classical Japanese works of literature. As such, he frequently quote people like Homer, Shakespeare, John Keats, and Marcel Proust during the story, especially when recalling passages of the works the Servants he meets are from
  • Kuzuki is the deuteragonist and has entire POV sections to him in the story due to being a middle aged professor. He raised Shirou after Kerry passed away and had a fling with Taiga when she was a highschooler and then a coed (the prominent moments of their past relationship we see in flashbacks are the sex). As teachers, both Kuzuki and Taiga bemoan the PC culture and liberal BS infesting the school's curriculum. Finally, when Medea is summoned, long passages are devolved to Kuzuki having sex with his sexy young Greek lover
  • The theme of the story is not about Shirou's ideals, but comparing the past and the present with the Servants and modern day, and what was good in one and bad in the other, or what stayed unchanged
  • While magic still has mystical aspects, there is an addition of scifi babble to it. Shirou's Projections aren't perfect due to the no-cloning theorem, Einzbern homunculi are philosophical zombies, Sakura controls dark matter, etc. This is another examination of past vs. future
  • Frequently, the plot is interspesed by news report and characters talking about the War on the Terror and the Iraq War, with almost every character having an opinion on it despite being Japanese and being barely related to the thing. Several characters express thankfulness over the fact that there aren't many Muslims and immigrants in Japan, and that's why the West will eventually be Islamized
  • Every Servant is historically/mythologically accurate in demeanor and attitude. Saber is a man for example, and every Servant speaks as if they are in their original works. Gilgamesh speaks poetically and frequently interjects curses/blessings as well as genealogies in his speech
  • Shirou and any given heroine frequently say "my love" to the point of being grating
  • Archer comes from a future where Democrats ran the US to the ground, Japan became a feudal empire again, and the Middle East is a unified Caliphate. Basically, he comes from Flashback. Archer frequently warns Rin about averting this terrible future where Islam is the global power, and he blames and wants to kill Shirou for that even though it will never change that future because weak, limp wristed liberalism has essentially doomed the world
  • The entity Archer and Saber contracts, Alaya, is similar to the Lions and Tigers and Bears of Hyperion Cantos, as it is future humanity's ultimate form after the eradication of Islam
  • Hassan is the main villain in every route, ever since Zouken summons him. He says Allahu Ackbar uncensored, and his fanaticism is frequently linked to modern Islamism. While the contrast between present and past show differences for every other Servants, the point is hammered that Islam is the same and always stagnant in the past, present, and future. He contracts with Atrum Galliasta, a self obsessed oil heir kidnapping young women like all Muslim men do. Gilgamesh, while cruel, is shown as better than him, and laments on how Islam ruined his country. Angra Mainyu also does the same when he manifests
  • The horror of the Shadow in Sakura's route is pretty well done though
  • The sex scenes are basically unchanged
 
Tealg said:
My turn: Worm, as written by Alan Moore.
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Alan Moore's Worm is a story about how teenagers aren't going to save the world, that people desiring to be heroes are merely seeking self-gratification, and is full of enough weird sex shit that you can't post it on SV.

So now that I've answered, here's my prompt: This thread, but populated by people capable of reading the opening post.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
More seriously, Rocky IV, by technothriller author Tom Clancy.
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Tom Clancy's Rocky IV ends with Rocky beating his Russian opponent through the power of the CIA and the US intelligence services, which are the best ever and how dare you ever question them, you pathetic worm?!

...also, it's turned into a video game, movie, theme park, and board game, all centered around how fun it is to travel to places with brown people and punch them in the face.

Now, someone give me a book report on that classic: John Ringo's Watership Down.
 
Datcord said:
Tom Clancy's Rocky IV ends with Rocky beating his Russian opponent through the power of the CIA and the US intelligence services, which are the best ever and how dare you ever question them, you pathetic worm?!

...also, it's turned into a video game, movie, theme park, and board game, all centered around how fun it is to travel to places with brown people and punch them in the face.

Now, someone give me a book report on that classic: John Ringo's Watership Down.
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Watership Down's protagonist is a rabbit named Fiver, a seer who receives a frightening vision of how their warren's willingness to welcome strangers, permit its inhabitants to freely practice their separate rabbit religions, and freely provide aid to the needy will cause its imminent destruction. After he fails to convince the chief rabbit, a female rabbit called Hilary, of the need to change their ways to avoid this fate, they set out on their own, with a handful of other rabbits coming with them...

I saw that people were talking about Peter Watts's Star Wars sequel trilogy. Someone tell me what that's all about?
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
I saw that people were talking about Peter Watts's Star Wars sequel trilogy. Someone tell me what that's all about?
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Oh, I know this one.

Watt's take on the material is pretty cynical; the Rebel Alliance's reward for defeating the Galactic Empire is to become the Galactic Empire in all but name, the trauma of oppression breeding oppressors convinced of their own righteousness. Not that the new Rebels, the First Order, are any better.

Luke's goal is to find a way out of this through Jedi hyper-cognition and suppression of his consciousness to connect with a pan-galactic alien organism/symbiote, but the Force itself is fundamentally inhuman and repugnant to what we as humans value, more interested in maintaining its own homeostasis through balancing 'light' and 'dark' like they are hormone levels than achieving justice.

Also there are vampires for some reason.

Can someone tell me about...the Mass Effect series, written by David Weber?
 
Acatalepsy said:
Oh, I know this one.

Watt's take on the material is pretty cynical; the Rebel Alliance's reward for defeating the Galactic Empire is to become the Galactic Empire in all but name, the trauma of oppression breeding oppressors convinced of their own righteousness. Not that the new Rebels, the First Order, are any better.

Luke's goal is to find a way out of this through Jedi hyper-cognition and suppression of his consciousness to connect with a pan-galactic alien organism/symbiote, but the Force itself is fundamentally inhuman and repugnant to what we as humans value, more interested in maintaining its own homeostasis through balancing 'light' and 'dark' like they are hormone levels than achieving justice.

Also there are vampires for some reason.

Can someone tell me about...the Mass Effect series, written by David Weber?
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Did you think that the glossing over of the Council, where they just ignore you until a crappy recording comes out, was undercooked? Well baby you're going to get 15 hours of them in conference going over Robleck's Rules of Order. And if you didn't think you could get off to the descriptions of mass drivers you are going to be proven oh so wrong. Also the Geth support a progressive income tax and must be purged.

Watership Down by John Ringo
 
Mutton said:
Did you think that the glossing over of the Council, where they just ignore you until a crappy recording comes out, was undercooked? Well baby you're going to get 15 hours of them in conference going over Robleck's Rules of Order. And if you didn't think you could get off to the descriptions of mass drivers you are going to be proven oh so wrong. Also the Geth support a progressive income tax and must be purged.
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Don't forget the Systems Alliance coming up with some new technology that completely invalidates all previous military doctrine and giving them an insurmountable advantage over the Council's uNeLeCtEd BuReAcRats. Also the Reapers are an extremely numerous but non-innovative species space-cuttlefish who are overcome by humanity's SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY.
 
HeWhoAdds said:
Don't forget the Systems Alliance coming up with some new technology that completely invalidates all previous military doctrine and giving them an insurmountable advantage over the Council's uNeLeCtEd BuReAcRats. Also the Reapers are an extremely numerous but non-innovative species space-cuttlefish who are overcome by humanity's SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY.
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I mean


that's not far off the canon anyway
 
HeWhoAdds said:
Don't forget the Systems Alliance coming up with some new technology that completely invalidates all previous military doctrine and giving them an insurmountable advantage over the Council's uNeLeCtEd BuReAcRats. Also the Reapers are an extremely numerous but non-innovative species space-cuttlefish who are overcome by humanity's SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY.
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foamy said:
I mean


that's not far off the canon anyway
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Hello entire opener of ME3
 
MJ12 Commando said:
So now that I've answered, here's my prompt: This thread, but populated by people capable of reading the opening post.
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Then maybe specify how people are failing to play by your rules instead of defaulting to passive aggression?
Acatalepsy said:
Can someone tell me about...the Mass Effect series, written by David Weber?
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HeWhoAdds said:
Don't forget the Systems Alliance coming up with some new technology that completely invalidates all previous military doctrine and giving them an insurmountable advantage over the Council's uNeLeCtEd BuReAcRats. Also the Reapers are an extremely numerous but non-innovative species space-cuttlefish who are overcome by humanity's SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY.
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Yet the majority of the series still focuses on great war era dreadnought tactics in space warfare. Not actual naval engagements, no, you'll get one an entry if you're lucky, but endlessly talking about warfare. And the protagonist are always right about what strategy or tactic works, while the antagonists are implanted with idiot balls.

Also the one level of ground combat is just five minutes of "Shepard shoot good because she got gooder gun". Followed by half an hour of asscovering why no one else has or can have this gun.
 
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Datcord said:
In return... Larry Correia's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.
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Aslan eats Jadis in the end, Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy would have been 4 American friends and would have had a gun with them each. Edmund would have slept with Jadis, Peter and Susan would be in a relationship. Much more description of the monsters under Jadis and the fighting and killing of these monsters.

As for me, J.R.R. Tolkien's Harry Potter.
 
Brainarius said:
Aslan eats Jadis in the end, Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy would have been 4 American friends and would have had a gun with them each. Edmund would have slept with Jadis, Peter and Susan would be in a relationship. Much more description of the monsters under Jadis and the fighting and killing of these monsters.

As for me, J.R.R. Tolkien's Harry Potter.
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There are tons of appendices after every book giving a detailed history of the wizarding world and the family tree of every major character. Every non-human race has a complex constructed language. There's a lot less focus on the details and specifics of magic, and the giant spiders aren't in any way friendly.
 
all fictions said:
  • As this is published in 2004, this is post-9/11 Simmons. RIP to the Hyperion Cantos fans
  • Long sections of the novel are written in the exact same style as Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and yes that means in exact Middle English
  • Shirou is a red head because he has Western blood. It will later be revealed he is a direct descendant of King Arthur
  • Shirou having inexplicable knowledge of myths is explained by him being an avid reader of Western canon, as he finds it more interesting than classical Japanese works of literature. As such, he frequently quote people like Homer, Shakespeare, John Keats, and Marcel Proust during the story, especially when recalling passages of the works the Servants he meets are from
  • Kuzuki is the deuteragonist and has entire POV sections to him in the story due to being a middle aged professor. He raised Shirou after Kerry passed away and had a fling with Taiga when she was a highschooler and then a coed (the prominent moments of their past relationship we see in flashbacks are the sex). As teachers, both Kuzuki and Taiga bemoan the PC culture and liberal BS infesting the school's curriculum. Finally, when Medea is summoned, long passages are devolved to Kuzuki having sex with his sexy young Greek lover
  • The theme of the story is not about Shirou's ideals, but comparing the past and the present with the Servants and modern day, and what was good in one and bad in the other, or what stayed unchanged
  • While magic still has mystical aspects, there is an addition of scifi babble to it. Shirou's Projections aren't perfect due to the no-cloning theorem, Einzbern homunculi are philosophical zombies, Sakura controls dark matter, etc. This is another examination of past vs. future
  • Frequently, the plot is interspesed by news report and characters talking about the War on the Terror and the Iraq War, with almost every character having an opinion on it despite being Japanese and being barely related to the thing. Several characters express thankfulness over the fact that there aren't many Muslims and immigrants in Japan, and that's why the West will eventually be Islamized
  • Every Servant is historically/mythologically accurate in demeanor and attitude. Saber is a man for example, and every Servant speaks as if they are in their original works. Gilgamesh speaks poetically and frequently interjects curses/blessings as well as genealogies in his speech
  • Shirou and any given heroine frequently say "my love" to the point of being grating
  • Archer comes from a future where Democrats ran the US to the ground, Japan became a feudal empire again, and the Middle East is a unified Caliphate. Basically, he comes from Flashback. Archer frequently warns Rin about averting this terrible future where Islam is the global power, and he blames and wants to kill Shirou for that even though it will never change that future because weak, limp wristed liberalism has essentially doomed the world
  • The entity Archer and Saber contracts, Alaya, is similar to the Lions and Tigers and Bears of Hyperion Cantos, as it is future humanity's ultimate form after the eradication of Islam
  • Hassan is the main villain in every route, ever since Zouken summons him. He says Allahu Ackbar uncensored, and his fanaticism is frequently linked to modern Islamism. While the contrast between present and past show differences for every other Servants, the point is hammered that Islam is the same and always stagnant in the past, present, and future. He contracts with Atrum Galliasta, a self obsessed oil heir kidnapping young women like all Muslim men do. Gilgamesh, while cruel, is shown as better than him, and laments on how Islam ruined his country. Angra Mainyu also does the same when he manifests
  • The horror of the Shadow in Sakura's route is pretty well done though
  • The sex scenes are basically unchanged
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I hate this, because I just finished reading Illium/Olympos and it's too true and this makes me bleed from my eyes and mouth.

But while I'm here, for the thread tax, Tom Kratman's Star Trek: Behold, ye fools, its just Star Trek Enterprise.

Now, someone convince me why I should read Nasu's Illium/Olympos Duology.
 
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Fivemarks said:
Now, someone convince me why I should read Nasu's Illium/Olympos Duology.
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Ah yes, the visual novel duology which arguably started the isekai trend in Japanese fiction, where a young high school student obsessed with the classics is resurrected by the Greek Gods as a recorder of the events described in the Iliad. The idea of the cyclical nature of history integrates Vedic myth interestingly into the setting itself, which becomes strangely syncretic despite how it ostensibly focuses entirely on Greek mythology. The technobabble is kind of weird and offputting for some, but other people really like the weird magic-science-babble and love how the author uses rules to set up and then subvert expectations.

Also, the trend of tall redheaded women in Japanese animation comes from Nasu's take on Achilles, a woman whose rage comes from her having to pretend to be a man in the male-dominated times of ancient myth (although this, as many other things in the duology, is inconsistent) and became an incredibly popular figurehead of the Kinoko Nasu extended universe and an incredibly popular character in general. It's even mythologically consistent, since some myths suggest that Achilles was disguised as a woman called Phyrra for an extended period of time.

Of course, it's not all fun and games. The writing can often be inconsistent, there seem to be multiple conflicting interpretations of several main characters which clash with each other, and although it's pretty clear that Nasu wanted to explore the idea of what makes a hero and whether heroes can exist outside of adversity, it's sometimes a little muddled on what it wants to say on that topic.

Can someone summarize for me the plot of the classic game Deus Ex, which was written by Chris Avellone?
 
MJ12 Commando said:
... Also, the trend of tall redheaded women in Japanese animation comes from Nasu's take on Achilles, a woman whose rage comes from her having to pretend to be a man in the male-dominated times of ancient myth (although this, as many other things in the duology, is inconsistent) and became an incredibly popular figurehead of the Kinoko Nasu extended universe and an incredibly popular character in general. It's even mythologically consistent, since some myths suggest that Achilles was disguised as a woman called Phyrra for an extended period of time...

Can someone summarize for me the plot of the classic game Deus Ex, which was written by Chris Avellone?
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A) That's just an Exalted character played by @FBH.

B) I didn't very much like it- Avellone comes off as exceedingly preachy and loving of his own farts, and in his drive to be smarter than the player and to deconstruct Cyberpunk, he kinda unironically goes "but what if the corporate overlords and the Illuminati are good guys because they're efficient?" Also his self insert character, Odysseus, won't shut up about how JC is as bad as the conspiracy he fights: if you go non-lethal, he chastises you on being soft and being responsible for their actions; if you kill everyone, you get chastised for being judge, jury, and executioner.

Okay, so, uh. How about the Gor Novels, as written by Peter F. Hamilton.
 
I am too sleepy to participate in this thread right now but know that I go to my bed cackling like a loon :V
 
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