Because this is a bit of a first draft for my book, I'm gonna put a lot of interjections and sometimes even spoilers everywhere. I scinecsrwdl hope nobody enjoys themselves. Wait... I mean, I scinecsrwdl hope you don't mind the text in Italics. To those of you who don't know what italics are, to find out what italics are, first, confirm you have a computer. Next, confirm your computer actually exists. If you aren't sure whether or not your computer exists, click hear. Now that I have gotten that obligatory joke out of ze wai, eat sit mudafukka!
Wait... That's not quite write...
Enjoy, question mark?
Also, these are italics, but I'm sure awl off yu new dat, dide yu knot?
Chapter -1: Brainstorming? Can be changed.
The basic story idea I'm trying to pull with this story is a sort of bait and switch. The main character with somewhat dubious origins has the same arrogance and behavior as a standard xianxia protag. I want the initial impression of him to be cliche, and nothing else.
Following this, I set up an obvious good and evil, the "Good" being the church of four elements which follows the standard xianxia cliche for churches. It's secretly evil.
For the "Evil" side, it gets a bit more complicated. Because of the emphasis I want to put on political, as opposed to personal power in the story, there has to be a sort of sensible reason why they are hated, and this reason, when propagandized by the church, makes them even more unlikable than they initially were. But they have to still be likable to the readerbase and it has to be done via cliche. If there's no cliche, then it ruins the whole bait and switch aspect of the story.
Thus, I came up with a sort of "Inherited evil" concept to explain this. The dark mages were the ruling class once upon a time, because dark magic is rarer and more powerful than the four elements. Cliche. The people banded together and overthrew their oppressive rulers. Not cliche in xianxia terms, but it fits the theme. The church, with no opponent grew corrupt. Chiche. The dark mages, once hunted to near extinction, are united under the single strongest person in the world start to form up a coherent political force. people start realizing that maybe they aren't evil after all, just that the ones in power were corrupted by it.
This is where the story starts. Also, the italics are getting tiring. There, that's better.
Even though I removed the italics, this is not part of the story.
Under these situations, a protagonist is introduced. His backstory is kept vague on purpose. I want to indicate the fact that I'm sht at writing, rather than the fact that I'm hiding his backstory. This works partially because I am sht at writing, and partially because I'm trying my hardest to give off the feeling of a boring, cliche story.
Main character has the special power cliche, because not only is he a wind mage, he's also a dark mage. Oh my god, the super boring reveal. He joins up with the dark mages and is uber talented. This is a cliche xianxia, of course he is. Now the first element of the switch aspect is revealed. A girl who's questionably talented. She sometimes behaves like a main character, and sometimes like a nitwit. She has nearly no talent in magic, but Checkmate, the greatest mage in the world took her in as his only disciple. Checkmate goes so far as to limit his communications with the rest of the dark mages to letters ferried through her. Either an enigma, or a waifu created from terrible writing. As you can tell, I want you to think the latter for the whole "MC in dark mage circle" arc. She acts suspicious of the MC the whole time, either casting a doubt on the MC, or causing people to perceive her as tsundere.
"How can you trust him? We don't know where he came from?"
I can already tell, this is going to be the hardest part of the novel to write. I want people to constantly think of her as a poorly written waifu while she constantly doubts the MC even as he does everything right. At the same time, these suspicions need to be justified, something most viewers can look at as foreshadowing later in the story. After all, twists cannot come from nowhere. And I need to do all of this without destroying her character because she is also the most important character int he second part of the story.
I wanna give up already.
So what ends the "MC in dark mage circle" arc? Obviously, betrayal. His backstory is revealed for the first time in the story, well, half, anyway. Firstly, he was abused no no end by his birth parents, especially his mother, causing him to grow up sick and twisted, not to mention, having a raging case of gynophobia culminating in him murdering his birth parents at the age of 7. Nobody knows this part of him, not even his adopted parents, and not even the readers.
No, the part revealed is the second half of his backstory, revealing that his adopted father is the pope of the chumardimading of the flipping 4 elementalisistig. And he was a double agent all along. Obviously, perfect waifu suspected him all along, but she was never quite sure. Thus, the leaders of the dark mages are all killed, outside of checkmate because nobody knows who or where he is. Claiming to be checkmate, he rules the dark mages with a mask on, claiming the reason for doing so is the same reason he sent all of his messages through waifu to begin with.
Now, until here his goals and those of the pope coincided perfectly. But here is where they start to differ. The pope wants to eradicate dark mages once and for all, while edgelord wants to rule the world, and in his opinion, the dark mages are useful tools. So he poisons the pope, skins the pope, and surgically installs the pope's face on his own. Flash back to the first half of his backstory. Because of dark magic, he manages to do this nearly perfectly. Think that one scene from the gu lord book story thingamajoozle. As you may guess, he pretends to be the leader of both organizations simultaneously and takes them both over.
Oh no!!! Evil has triumphed!!! It's Evil Gu man thingamajoozal Mk. II!!!
Well, not quite, because checkmate is still alive.
Phew!
Which is where perfect waifu comes in. She survived when the church ppl killed all the higher up dark mages, because she was a lot stronger than what hey expected her to be. She was actually her own disciple all along!!!
What???
Now time for a rant on checkmate. The bait and switch I was referring to was a case of the main character betraying the reader. Something I came up with as the idea upon which this book stemmed from. That has basically already been realized. But the story can't end here, because he isn't supposed to win. And the perfect man to beat him is checkmate. Originally, Checkmate was supposed to be a sage alive for multiple centuries. But, I couldn't quite make that work with the rest of the story, because on one hand, checkmate is supposed to be smarter than MC, and on the other, he can't have the audience hate him in the dark mage arc, because he's supposed to be the great pillar of the dark mages, a force of pure good, and thus he must not be evil. Another reason is that if he was actually suspicious, he could go through with these suspicions, and while that is a flat ending, it'd be a plot hole that anyone re-reading the story can pick up on.
Making him into a teenage girl did multiple things to the story. First, it allows me to hide his suspicions from the readers as the rantings of a tsundere waifu. Second, it creates an excuse for her to be powerless to kill edgelord, since, while checkmate has the power, his disciple doesn't, and her suspicions weren't important enough for her to disclose her identity. Third, this allows for a smaller bait and switch where the obvious waifu is actually the real main character.
Now there are a couple problems with this as well. See, Checkmate is one of the smartest men alive, and the best at magic. This is due in part to him having 2 elements, being hundreds of years old, and monstrous talent. It makes sense he's so strong. But not as a teenage girl.
This creates two problems: First, she's a Mary Sue. Absolutely and completely. Sure Edgelord is also unnaturally smart and powerful, but he's got a backstory that somewhat explains it, not to mention, he's the cliche MC, during the early portion, and a villain in the latter portion. Plus, she's even smarter and even stronger.
Second, this sounds like a friggin feminist propaganda story. The main villain is a women hating edgelord with a superiority complex, and the new force of good is a Mary Sue good at everything. What is this, star wars?
Which is why I'm gonna end the brainstorming session here. What happens after edgelord is revealed? I Dunno. An interesting route to go would be to make her equally crazy and to have 2 evil crazy protagonists, but that undermines the whole bait and switch portion of the story. I know nobody's gunna read this, but just in case sumboho does, plz suggaga any gud ideas yuz haz in de commenters don't understand the egyptian god cards.
Wait... That's not quite write...
Enjoy, question mark?
Also, these are italics, but I'm sure awl off yu new dat, dide yu knot?
Chapter -1: Brainstorming? Can be changed.
The basic story idea I'm trying to pull with this story is a sort of bait and switch. The main character with somewhat dubious origins has the same arrogance and behavior as a standard xianxia protag. I want the initial impression of him to be cliche, and nothing else.
Following this, I set up an obvious good and evil, the "Good" being the church of four elements which follows the standard xianxia cliche for churches. It's secretly evil.
For the "Evil" side, it gets a bit more complicated. Because of the emphasis I want to put on political, as opposed to personal power in the story, there has to be a sort of sensible reason why they are hated, and this reason, when propagandized by the church, makes them even more unlikable than they initially were. But they have to still be likable to the readerbase and it has to be done via cliche. If there's no cliche, then it ruins the whole bait and switch aspect of the story.
Thus, I came up with a sort of "Inherited evil" concept to explain this. The dark mages were the ruling class once upon a time, because dark magic is rarer and more powerful than the four elements. Cliche. The people banded together and overthrew their oppressive rulers. Not cliche in xianxia terms, but it fits the theme. The church, with no opponent grew corrupt. Chiche. The dark mages, once hunted to near extinction, are united under the single strongest person in the world start to form up a coherent political force. people start realizing that maybe they aren't evil after all, just that the ones in power were corrupted by it.
This is where the story starts. Also, the italics are getting tiring. There, that's better.
Even though I removed the italics, this is not part of the story.
Under these situations, a protagonist is introduced. His backstory is kept vague on purpose. I want to indicate the fact that I'm sht at writing, rather than the fact that I'm hiding his backstory. This works partially because I am sht at writing, and partially because I'm trying my hardest to give off the feeling of a boring, cliche story.
Main character has the special power cliche, because not only is he a wind mage, he's also a dark mage. Oh my god, the super boring reveal. He joins up with the dark mages and is uber talented. This is a cliche xianxia, of course he is. Now the first element of the switch aspect is revealed. A girl who's questionably talented. She sometimes behaves like a main character, and sometimes like a nitwit. She has nearly no talent in magic, but Checkmate, the greatest mage in the world took her in as his only disciple. Checkmate goes so far as to limit his communications with the rest of the dark mages to letters ferried through her. Either an enigma, or a waifu created from terrible writing. As you can tell, I want you to think the latter for the whole "MC in dark mage circle" arc. She acts suspicious of the MC the whole time, either casting a doubt on the MC, or causing people to perceive her as tsundere.
"How can you trust him? We don't know where he came from?"
I can already tell, this is going to be the hardest part of the novel to write. I want people to constantly think of her as a poorly written waifu while she constantly doubts the MC even as he does everything right. At the same time, these suspicions need to be justified, something most viewers can look at as foreshadowing later in the story. After all, twists cannot come from nowhere. And I need to do all of this without destroying her character because she is also the most important character int he second part of the story.
I wanna give up already.
So what ends the "MC in dark mage circle" arc? Obviously, betrayal. His backstory is revealed for the first time in the story, well, half, anyway. Firstly, he was abused no no end by his birth parents, especially his mother, causing him to grow up sick and twisted, not to mention, having a raging case of gynophobia culminating in him murdering his birth parents at the age of 7. Nobody knows this part of him, not even his adopted parents, and not even the readers.
No, the part revealed is the second half of his backstory, revealing that his adopted father is the pope of the chumardimading of the flipping 4 elementalisistig. And he was a double agent all along. Obviously, perfect waifu suspected him all along, but she was never quite sure. Thus, the leaders of the dark mages are all killed, outside of checkmate because nobody knows who or where he is. Claiming to be checkmate, he rules the dark mages with a mask on, claiming the reason for doing so is the same reason he sent all of his messages through waifu to begin with.
Now, until here his goals and those of the pope coincided perfectly. But here is where they start to differ. The pope wants to eradicate dark mages once and for all, while edgelord wants to rule the world, and in his opinion, the dark mages are useful tools. So he poisons the pope, skins the pope, and surgically installs the pope's face on his own. Flash back to the first half of his backstory. Because of dark magic, he manages to do this nearly perfectly. Think that one scene from the gu lord book story thingamajoozle. As you may guess, he pretends to be the leader of both organizations simultaneously and takes them both over.
Oh no!!! Evil has triumphed!!! It's Evil Gu man thingamajoozal Mk. II!!!
Well, not quite, because checkmate is still alive.
Phew!
Which is where perfect waifu comes in. She survived when the church ppl killed all the higher up dark mages, because she was a lot stronger than what hey expected her to be. She was actually her own disciple all along!!!
What???
Now time for a rant on checkmate. The bait and switch I was referring to was a case of the main character betraying the reader. Something I came up with as the idea upon which this book stemmed from. That has basically already been realized. But the story can't end here, because he isn't supposed to win. And the perfect man to beat him is checkmate. Originally, Checkmate was supposed to be a sage alive for multiple centuries. But, I couldn't quite make that work with the rest of the story, because on one hand, checkmate is supposed to be smarter than MC, and on the other, he can't have the audience hate him in the dark mage arc, because he's supposed to be the great pillar of the dark mages, a force of pure good, and thus he must not be evil. Another reason is that if he was actually suspicious, he could go through with these suspicions, and while that is a flat ending, it'd be a plot hole that anyone re-reading the story can pick up on.
Making him into a teenage girl did multiple things to the story. First, it allows me to hide his suspicions from the readers as the rantings of a tsundere waifu. Second, it creates an excuse for her to be powerless to kill edgelord, since, while checkmate has the power, his disciple doesn't, and her suspicions weren't important enough for her to disclose her identity. Third, this allows for a smaller bait and switch where the obvious waifu is actually the real main character.
Now there are a couple problems with this as well. See, Checkmate is one of the smartest men alive, and the best at magic. This is due in part to him having 2 elements, being hundreds of years old, and monstrous talent. It makes sense he's so strong. But not as a teenage girl.
This creates two problems: First, she's a Mary Sue. Absolutely and completely. Sure Edgelord is also unnaturally smart and powerful, but he's got a backstory that somewhat explains it, not to mention, he's the cliche MC, during the early portion, and a villain in the latter portion. Plus, she's even smarter and even stronger.
Second, this sounds like a friggin feminist propaganda story. The main villain is a women hating edgelord with a superiority complex, and the new force of good is a Mary Sue good at everything. What is this, star wars?
Which is why I'm gonna end the brainstorming session here. What happens after edgelord is revealed? I Dunno. An interesting route to go would be to make her equally crazy and to have 2 evil crazy protagonists, but that undermines the whole bait and switch portion of the story. I know nobody's gunna read this, but just in case sumboho does, plz suggaga any gud ideas yuz haz in de commenters don't understand the egyptian god cards.
