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SV has an even problem

The thing about power fantasy in SB/SV quests that strikes me as different and kind of stupid compared to any other medium is that they usually don't really jive with having an actual failure state no matter what happens. Like in a non-interactive story the success of the protagonist can be inevitable but still feel compelling and earn due to how it's written. In tabletop games the DM can let you get fucked when you screw up and let you suffer the consequences up to and including killing your character.

With how a lot of quests are handled it's like this weird limbo state between an actual story and a game where you have to give the players options but kind of have to keep moving forward without kicking them in the balls or killing the character outright, just keep letting the players do the cool shit they came to vicariously do. You can't just say, oh what you did was really stupid and got the character killed, everyone fuck off and go home because that would just make people mad.

So instead of writing a story that's carefully constructed to make the peril feel real and the power fantasy feel earned, the writer has to ultimately keep the successes and power fantasy going strong out of any number of dumb actions the voters and write ins want taken and to possibly justify them with bullshit and contrivance. So there's a real chance of the character becoming a ridiculous Mary Sue through sheer weight of stupidity.

I can easily see why this would give the power fantasy present in SB/SV a really different feel than in any other story. Where the competent and power fantasy is just taken for granted without necessarily needing to be earned or built up to on a narrative level.
 
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Reveen said:
The thing about power fantasy in SB/SV quests that strikes me as different and kind of stupid compared to any other medium is that they usually don't really jive with having an actual failure state no matter what happens. Like in a non-interactive story the success of the protagonist can be inevitable but still feel compelling and earn due to how it's written. In tabletop games the DM can let you get fucked when you screw up and let you suffer the consequences up to and including killing your character.

With how a lot of quests are handled it's like this weird limbo state between an actual story and a game where you have to give the players options but kind of have to keep moving forward without kicking them in the balls or killing the character outright, and you have to keep moving forward and let the readers vicariously do the things they came to do. You can't just say, oh what you did was really stupid and got the character killed, everyone fuck off because that would just make people mad.

So instead of a story that's carefully constructed to make the peril feel real and the power fantasy feel earned the writer has to ultimately keep the successes and power fantasy going strong out of any number of dumb actions the voters and write ins want taken. So there's a real chance of the character becoming a ridiculous Mary Sue through sheer weight of stupidity.

I can easily see why this would give the power fantasy present in SB/SV a really different feel than in any other story. Where the competent and power fantasy is just taken for granted without necessarily needing to be earned or built up to on a narrative level.
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See, that's why I prefer running Riot Quests compared to other sorts of game; it keeps the workload manageable compared to a full RP, but still gives me leeway to kill off a few characters if they do stupid shit or roll really bad.
 
keios said:
Actually, I respond in jest, but this new view of the quote does have interesting and relevant implications for the most often suggested fix to power fantasies -- don't dumb down your protags, just level up the other characters.
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I think competence is more important than power when it comes to that sort of set-up. For examples of that done wrong, just look at how the SAO thread on SV coined the term "mesovore" for a character who drains the competence and agency away from other characters.
Certain types of power fantasies on this website also tend to have overly-competent characters while making everyone else less competent. Usually rationalfic, uplift fic, and related fic types.

Reveen said:
I can easily see why this would give the power fantasy present in SB/SV a really different feel than in any other story. Where the competent and power fantasy is just taken for granted without necessarily needing to be earned or built up to on a narrative level.
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I'd argue that it's not just quests. I've seen quite a few stories where the authors never had the characters suffer real setbacks.
In one case an up to that point pragmatic, competent, and intelligent villain (if a bit hammy) had the main character completely helpless, had stolen his power, and had a gun to his head only to have the villain lose every bit of competence, pragmatism, and intelligence he'd shown so far and leave the protagonist to be killed by another villain in a way that would have even Goldfinger shaking his head in disbelief. The protagonist then managed to not only talk that villain into sparing him, he got himself freed. It was at that point I lost most of my interest in the story and quit reading soon after.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
The one psych professor I had who actually talked about it say he's fairly certain that the ventilation theory of anger management is total bullshit.

(At a conservative-by-general-US-standards christian college, mind you, so using profanity at all automatically invokes OOC is serious business)

I mean yeah, we don't want them to act out, but whether fantasies discourage or encourage or have no effect on actual levels of acting out is...

Afaik, not really known for lack of data/study.
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A person's time for doing physical actions is functionally a zero-sum thing, if they a doing thing A they can't be doing thing B. Bread & circus is well known thing, where if you give people something to-do which are vaguely engaging, they are more unlikely to-do things you don't want them to-do.

This isn't remotely the same as ventilation theory of anger management!
 
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logiccosmic said:
And that's kind of my questioning here - is how to develop and nurture that, well, artistic talent. I don't mean to rag, dismiss, or otherwise belittle any artist here, but I think that writing is one of the hard forms to get critically reviewed. Partly because of content, and partly because of medium. It's easy to listen to a song, watch an episode or movie, or view a picture or painting. But reading something requires investment, and a desire to keep going, if only because humans are so visual.

And thus, how do we do this tricky thing. How do we, and speaking for myself here, the well, crappy writers learn? It's not enough to imitate - there has to be understanding.
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As cheesy as it is to say the answer I've personally arrived at is like...coaching.

To be clear I do not very specifically mean that writers need to try and get under the wing of Other, Greater Writers who then endeavor to recreate them in their own image, nothing that in-depth or direct; I mean rather that more writers (and more readers) need to seek out, give, and receive help from more writers (and more readers). And they need to seek out, give, and receive (SGR? sure why not) that help earlier and more frequently in their writing processes, and to act on that. There really isn't One Easy Trick that will make everyone's stories all better forever that...I dunno only EarthScorpion is doing.

Instead more people have to try harder to make their stories better and more people have to be willing to step up to help them improve their stories.


keios said:
No one man should have all that power, actually! (Everyone should have it).

Don't mangle it, because West spent 5000 hours writing this song!

Actually, I respond in jest, but this new view of the quote does have interesting and relevant implications for the oft-suggested fix to power fantasies -- that is, not to dumb down your protags, but rather, to "level up" other characters.
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Straight escalation is not a particularly useful fix to this (also it's not always a problem). It's a bit tricky to try and be...neat and tidy with my objection beyond saying that like...the fact that the conflicts in (hypothetical) your (hypothetical) power fantasy aren't engaging doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the (hypothetical) fact that your protagonists are not directly threatened by your villains in direct conflict. The problem might be that you have failed to make the reader care about either side, or failed to make it clear why there needs to be a conflict at all, and those are only a couple possibilities as to why there might be a problem.
 
Kaiya said:
That's silly.
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The idea of literary canon as something worth preserving is silly, but we still try to maintain it.

The definition of fanfiction needs to be stricter than it is, or literally all work that's derivative of another work, from Kill Six Billion Demons (Hinduism fanfiction) to the work of Tarantino (grindhouse and French New Wave fanfiction) to the Bible itself (Babylonian and Classical Mythology Bashing! fanfiction) are going to be labled as fanfiction for having intertextual elements.
 
I just write said:
See, that's why I prefer running Riot Quests compared to other sorts of game; it keeps the workload manageable compared to a full RP, but still gives me leeway to kill off a few characters if they do stupid shit or roll really bad.
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Riot quests?

Cetashwayo said:
Power fantasies are intrinsic to quests. Even the basic total agency afforded to voters over the main character or mechanism of movement is a power fantasy, leaving aside it being a power fantasy in the quest. That's fine because quests could not function without that agency. But it also obviously lends itself to power fantasies and rejects loss of agency much louder than even popular fanfiction. It has to, because to do otherwise would make it a terrible quest. Even the most railroady quests give the illusion of choice and don't explicitly take it away from the player, or constrain those choices within specific turns on the railway.

It has this in common with video games. Bioshock took narrative control away from the player, but its genius in the central conceit of agency was that the player did everything freely following the instructions of Atlas, and that became the basis of their mind control. It wasn't "built into" the mechanics. You weren't literally forced to do what Atlas said by the game taking control of your character from you until the actual cinematics about it. A game where you actually had no control in the broadest sense of actually being able to play it wouldn't be a game at all, because the whole point is that one way or another it's interactive. That, again, lends itself to power fantasies, but it's obvious games are a very big medium and there are many games that despite giving control to you don't 'feel' like a power fantasy at all.

It's just that games are big and have been around a long time, quests have not, and there are very few metaquests that explore questing as a medium, because it's so small.
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This topic sort-of came up on the CC-AMA server a while back, in a short discussion on how to run a popular quest. PMAS, TBG, and MFD, numbers three, five, and six on the "most replied quests" list, have as protagonists "literally (grief)hax", "Admiral of 100 mobile Weapons of Planetary Destruction and support staff", and "overly creative sealmaster prodigy literally on Team Uplift". And those are the only three I follow†.
†from the first ten or so.

All three feature fluff (Mumihugs, heartwarming omakes, and Team Uplift's relationships).
All three feature Empire-building (All Hail Queen Tomoe, "This is not an Empire Quest", and uplift everyone to make utopia). And most importantly:
All three feature the direct results of decisions made.

There's something compelling about seeing effects rippling out. The AGG-style of quest, popularized by Sage, usually features exponential growth from "what is a light switch" to "people adore me as much as God". Rise is well written, and the thematic elements play a large part, but at the end, like the previous iterations of AGG, it can be considered a power fantasy. In Song's case, he made reality Shounen.

Song exemplifies the common protagonist archetype of The Ace. They're the best at what they do. They fight. They're the hero, and in many cases, they start at number one, and go up from there. They are what Heroes (or Anti-Heroes, or Villains) become. Let's cite more examples of High Tier protagonists: Jade Agni (Ignition, Planeswalker!PC), Serras Salnus (An Extra Primarch), Seram Tiberius Law (A Simple Transaction, Gamer-like), Anna Sanchez (Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest, Number One Valkyrie, "Coroner", "Trump"), Anastasia Boheart/Magical Girl Solid Core (Divinity growth affinity), Ethan David Jameson (Mage Trials: Crucible, Muscle Wizard).

I don't think this is a problem, but it is an unsatisfactory trend.

Earlier, WhoAmEye gave a concise summary for fics.
WhoAmEye said:
So, as I see it, if you want a fic to be popular, you've basically got a small checklist/flowchart of things to go through:
Will the fic be violent? Go all out, damn the consequences, Here Be Dragons style. Taylor should not find any challenge worth her time short of Endbringers!
Will the fic be fluffy? Everyone will be friends, or converted. Include some chibification of things for that exotic AU flavour. Endbringers are a favourite. The conflict will have consequences, but it will be near zero.
Will the fic be comedy? Just go straight up crack. Walking on Corpses, The TECHNO QUEEN (*krakathoom*), that one fic where Taylor's parents steal Contessa's hat collection, I Wanna Be The Goat.
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Although these quests and these questions don't represent all of SV, the fanfic community, or the internet, they do represent a large, popular subset.

What can be done on a Forum scale? Nothing, but improving writers, and promoting a wider variety of quest and story that doesn't fall into the Powerful PC/Empire Builder bucket. A monthly new/small quest showcase with a monthly sticky slot or banner notification/link might help variety, but better writing must come from within.

And on a personal scale, you can make the change you want to see. Right now, I'm planning a KanColle Shipgirl quest to practice writing, among several other more complicated reasons mostly beyond the scope of this post. A good chunk people in this thread and reading this post probably already write, but for those that don't? Try writing. Make every week a Forum-wide Fiction/Quest Writing Week. That, or look at more quests. (Shameless plug: Check my quest out when it's out!)


[Wow. This post turned out (relatively) long.]
 
The OP is worded like a parody but both SV and SB do have a fundamental well trod issue of 90% of its 'writers' approaching stories like they're problems to be solved by a cast of Turn-Based-Tactics units masquerading as characters, leading to an endless regurgitation of six or seven bafflingly popular premises that renders the creative writing page basically unreadable to anyone who's not interested in that sort of thing.

Ironically, I'm not sure if this is a problem to be solved, lol.
 
I just write said:
See, that's why I prefer running Riot Quests compared to other sorts of game; it keeps the workload manageable compared to a full RP, but still gives me leeway to kill off a few characters if they do stupid shit or roll really bad.
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Sorry for the noob question, but what exactly is a riot quest?

Xon said:
A person's time for doing physical actions is functionally a zero-sum thing, if they a doing thing A they can't be doing thing B. Bread & circus is well known thing, where if you give people something to-do which are vaguely engaging, they are more unlikely to-do things you don't want them to-do.

This isn't remotely the same as ventilation theory of anger management!
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Oh, that's what you meant. Your original post kinda looked like the old "well if they vent their negative tendencies through 'harmless' talking/rp/gaming the thing, They won't do the actual bad thing."

Sorry for misunderstanding.

AlphaDelta said:
This topic sort-of came up on the CC-AMA server a while back, in a short discussion on how to run a popular quest. PMAS, TBG, and MFD, numbers three, five, and six on the "most replied quests" list,
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Could you spell them out i dunno what the abbreviations stand for.
 
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Chloe Sullivan said:
Sorry for the noob question, but what exactly is a riot quest?
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It's the kind of a quest when during the character creation you give people their options and they go:

"No, man! Fuck that noise! Human and elf?! No, the MC's a fucking teletubby! Do we want to attack the dude or talk to him? No, man, we fucking suplex him while doing diplomacy because fuck, we can do anything we fucking want! Holy shit! It's riot, baby! We're rioting now!"

... And that's what a riot quest is.
 
Ser_Serendipity said:
The OP is worded like a parody but both SV and SB do have a fundamental well trod issue of 90% of its 'writers' approaching stories like they're problems to be solved by a cast of Turn-Based-Tactics units masquerading as characters
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I mean, this concept isn't inherently bad. This approach to telling stories is massively drawn from computer and table top games and recounting of gameplay sessions of, y'know, actual games can be compelling in narrative form. But this is because of the emergent properties and failure states in games that game stories get their bite from.

Then people try to simulate this experience entirely in narrative form and it doesn't work because games are better at coming up with crazy random shit than those writers are and people know it. Boatmurdered only works as a fun piece of metafiction because of the knowledge that it's the result of a game and not just some dumb fantasy writer making shit up.

Incidentally, this is the problem with really gameified magic systems in non-game narratives, because it's the dice rolls that make them actually compelling.

Fandom Lord said:
I'd argue that it's not just quests. I've seen quite a few stories where the authors never had the characters suffer real setbacks.
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It's not even that quests don't suffer setbacks to make their success more narratively palatable and to have a building arc leading up to the victories. That's just regular old bad writing. Here it's more an issue of the quest writer potentially being handed a "solution" that's just dumb, and/or shouldn't work in the context of the setting, but still needs to succeed for the quest to keep going and not piss off it's audience.
 
I don't really go on User Fiction that much, but I do recall some people on the SB fanfic thread complaining that SV is a bit of a Hugbox when it comes to fiction. That people are afraid to criticize bad power fantasies either because they're afraid of getting attacked, or because it's just not part of the forum culture.
Dunno how true it is, but I could see how a lack of proper feedback might lead to a lot of bad power fantasies.
 
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Ser_Serendipity said:
The OP is worded like a parody but both SV and SB do have a fundamental well trod issue of 90% of its 'writers' approaching stories like they're problems to be solved by a cast of Turn-Based-Tactics units masquerading as characters, leading to an endless regurgitation of six or seven bafflingly popular premises that renders the creative writing page basically unreadable to anyone who's not interested in that sort of thing.

Ironically, I'm not sure if this is a problem to be solved, lol.
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It's hard to experiment, get feedback, learn, grow, and evolve as a writer when stepping out of the meta results in such a lack of attention or feedback or anything whatsoever.

It's actually quite demoralizing.

I have to constantly weigh up whether I can afford to try a thing I'm excited to experiment with when the potential loss of feedback/readers looms overhead like a vulture. Or, even worse, what happens if I do try it and it actually does turn out to be a bad bet? Those readers are lost and the chance of them checking up on the thread again to find out I've decided 'yeah, nah, I think I'll retcon that after all' is near nill.
 
WhoAmEye said:
I have to constantly weigh up whether I can afford to try a thing I'm excited to experiment with when the potential loss of feedback/readers looms overhead like a vulture. Or, even worse, what happens if I do try it and it actually does turn out to be a bad bet? Those readers are lost and the chance of them checking up on the thread again to find out I've decided 'yeah, nah, I think I'll retcon that after all' is near nill.
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If you're going to make decisions, stick by them. And if they don't work out, burn the thread, and start again. Fundamentally, the culture of SV/SB is too entrenched for any one author to make a difference, but that doesn't mean you have to play the meta to get enough feedback, especially if you build a cadre or readers that trust you.

Besides, that routine is boring as hell, I can't imagine it.
Reveen said:
I mean, this concept isn't inherently bad. This approach to telling stories is massively drawn from computer and table top games and recounting of gameplay sessions of, y'know, actual games can be compelling in narrative form. But this is because of the emergent properties and failure states in games that game stories get their bite from.
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Hence me including the "ironically" bit. What people do with their time isn't my business; I've wasted god knows how many hours watching ShackTac, most people probably find that boring af. It's just a shame it becomes so domineering in the CrW section.
 
Vyslanté said:
Expressing anger is bad, venting anger is bad, bottling anger is bad.

Guess we all have to become zen monks unable to be angry.
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No, you just have to find a way to stop your anger.

Though, granted, for me that tends to come from converting it into misery or getting the shit kicked out of me for reasons you really don't wanna know.
 
Ser_Serendipity said:
but that doesn't mean you have to play the meta to get enough feedback, especially if you build a cadre or readers that trust you.
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Aaaand don't you usually get to that point by playing in the meta until you have a solid fanbase you can rely on? And even then, you get those readers by playing the meta. As soon as you step out of it, they lose interest.

Ser_Serendipity said:
If you're going to make decisions, stick by them. And if they don't work out, burn the thread, and start again
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I kinda envy you for being able to consider that an actual option tbh
 
WhoAmEye said:
Aaaand don't you usually get to that point by playing in the meta until you have a solid fanbase you can rely on? And even then, you get those readers by playing the meta. As soon as you step out of it, they lose interest.
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I know it's nice to see the numbers go up, but I'm not sure it's a good mentality. The person you're writing for, first and foremost, is yourself.
 
LSkullD said:
Trust me they're not AT ALL sex related.

Also. Dude. 16.
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Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction to 'you don't want to know = sexual'. My parents were not great parents.
Vyslanté said:
I know it's nice to see the numbers go up, but I'm not sure it's a good mentality. The person you're writing for, first and foremost, is yourself.
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My social anxiety and validation complex says otherwise. (My parents were not great parents).

I mean, sure, writing for myself is... well, fine and all, but there's no motivation to let it get any futher than just this recurring daydream movie in my head. The validation of the people also enjoying this is a pretty big part of why I write. And, if I'm only writing for myself, how am I meant to improve? This is one of those things where, sure, you can self-assess that your're maybe weak in an area, but you can't exactly teach yourself to get better can you? Until you get to the point where you're a published author capable of living off the earnings from that alone, and even then, the reader/writer relationship is vitally important and tied to progression.

Watching the numbers go up makes me think I've done something right, which is why the fic meta going on right now is a problem. I mean, technically it isn't a problem, in general. But for writers trying to get better, or explore, it's a right pain in the ass to get around. It completely throws off what I think the usual for good is, and I'm left wonder if this is popular because it's catering, or is it popular because it's actually good? Is this not popular because I'm writing for the wrong fandom, or is it actually not good?

To exaggerate a little, it's like trying to write a story for HFY fandoms or whatever exploring an actual underdog style uphill struggle where human tenacity and ingenuity and thinking skills win us the day, and receives little to no readership or response, and then you write a six line snappy joke or something and it gets six times as much attention and could spark an entire discussion over whether or not that could actually happen.
 
WhoAmEye said:
Aaaand don't you usually get to that point by playing in the meta until you have a solid fanbase you can rely on? And even then, you get those readers by playing the meta. As soon as you step out of it, they lose interest.
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*shrugs*

I've never felt any need to follow a "meta". I just write what I want to. I'll jump from writing feminist comedy to urban fantasy horror to crackfic that postulates that Gendo Ikari's awful parenting makes more sense if you assume he's a saiyan.

But then again, I'm not someone who's chained to the very niche Worm fanbase. I wasn't chained to the Evangelion fanbase or the ZnT fanbase, either. Even when I write Worm, I'm getting readers who aren't just reading it because it's Worm. A broader portfolio of people who'll read your stuff because it's you writing it, rather than because it hits the general preferences of Worm readers, immunises you to being chained to the Worm conventions. Don't write in a single niche. Spread yourself out and practice different styles, rather than chasing a single fad. Cultivate a broader audience so you can experiment.

After all, "In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don't change, you die."
 
EarthScorpion said:
Don't write in a single niche. Spread yourself out and practice different styles, rather than chasing a single fad. Cultivate a broader audience so you can experiment.
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While that is a good point, the only fandoms I know well enough to write in are Worm, RWBY, and... that is probably it. RWBY doesn't seem to be very popular here?
 
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