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dlamp-dictator · 6 years

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Your Dictator’s Works: Rabid Avenger

May this be the last time I make a big post/essay about Tokyo Ghoul.

Finally, I’m no longer distracted by MMOs, fighting games, or Fire Emblem Warriors, it’s time to finally cross this off the list of essays I need to finish this month. This is something I’ve been wanting to talk about for months now, but I needed some time to get a start on the latest fanfiction before I did it.

So yes, fanfics. I love a good a fanfic, and writing them as well. A the moment I’ve been working on a Tokyo Ghoul called Rabid Avenger, an action fanfic that focuses on Touka Kirishima. And while I’m about to get to work on chapter 3 I figured could take a moment to describe my process of writing fanfics, my preferences, how I go about writing them, etc.

Allen’s Preferences/Inspiration

Y’know... I was going to go into this long spiel about what I personally like to read, watch, and consume in terms of my media and genre preferences and how that played into me writing this specific fanfic, but there’s a quote of something I wrote about a year ago that explains my preferences perfectly, so I’ll just copy and paste that here.

“...[I]f there’s anything I love more than watching shows about cute anime girls, it’s... cute anime girls BEATING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE IN ONE-ON-ONE HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT.”

I think that quote speaks for itself, but just to go a little further in depth I tend to prefer action-focused series, shows, and books that have a female protagonist. The Maximum Ride series (at least until book 4 happened), Nanoha Vivid, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Soul Eater, Senran Kagura, the list goes on. Sadly, there aren’t too many fanfics that have female characters doing shounen-esque things in them, few that hit any notes with me anyway.

And you know the saying: make the content you want to see.

So slowly, but surely I’ve been trying to write up some stories that have my favorite heroines duking it out with forces known and unknown in their series. I’ll spare you all the list I’ve written and attempted to write, but Touka Kirishima and Tokyo Ghoul were next on my list of action fanfics to write. And so... Rabid Avenger was born after 3 or 4 rewrites of the first chapter.

Just a quick summary, Rabid Avenger is something of a what-if/AU/Expansion of what Touka does after Part 1 on Tokyo Ghoul. Not wanting to feel helpless like she was during the raid on the 20th Ward, Touka moves to the 11th Ward where Aogiri is based to train herself to get stronger by hunting down CCG Investigators in the area, as well as deal with Aogiri directly after the mess they caused that led to Anteiku being destroyed. I plan for this fanfic to be something of a battle series with Touka facing off against not only CCG Investigators, but members of Aogiri as well as factions and powers beyond her start to move and she slowly pieces together what’s going on in the Ward.

Yeah, it’s really shounen by design, but I hope it’ll turn out well.

The Research Phase

This brings me to how exactly I write up most of my fanfics. Before I make any fanfic I usually take anywhere between 3 days to a little over a week to research the universe and lore of the series I’m writing. I read up on namely the characters I want to use, the world’s power/magic system, a general plot synopsis on what happens before and after the canon point I’m writing at, and the list goes on depending on where I want to take the story. I do most of my research by reading the wiki page of whatever series I’m writing the fanfic for to an almost religious point. I practically have the Tokyo Ghoul wiki bookmark at this point I’ve been to the site so often. Rabid Avenger took about a week and a half before I started writing the fanfic, and I still go back to just make sure I’m consistent with how the characters behave and the terms I use.

In terms of researching characters for Rabid Avenger I looked up information on Touka, Renji, Ayato, Eto, Akira, and Roma as I plan on having these 6 be the main cast.

And boy, as someone that said they weren’t planning on reading :Re I got spoiled by a quite a bit of things.

Literally every character I just listed makes some big move or has some big twist to them in the second series. It was... shocking to say the least, given what I wanted to do with some of these character, Ayato and Roma especially, but I think I can still make it work despite... spoiler things throwing a bit of a wrench in the works for some meet-ups and battles I want to make happen.

The next thing I researched were the kagune and quinque. This was mostly to make sure I could properly write how they could be used in battle strategies, namely Touka’s. I still find this to be a compelling battle system. Every kagune has a strength and weakness, as well as a way to cover up that weakness, and every quinque is just as unique if not more. I haven’t had a chance to write about battle strategy in this specific fanfic yet, but this’ll probably be the most challenging part due to Touka’s personality. Touka isn’t a person that really makes plans when fighting, usually going by instinct, so a lot of the battle strategy will more than likely come from her enemies more than herself and her constantly paying for her rash behavior. It’s something I can use for character development as she slowly becomes a smarter fighter.

And lastly, for this fanfic I actually didn’t have to look up too much in terms of plot synopsis, as this takes place after Part 1 of Tokyo Ghoul ends and I have a physical copy of the series at arms reach. If anything, I have to look back at the first few chapters to get an idea of how Touka fights and acts in tense situations, but this part of the research really didn’t need much... well, research.

Writing Phase

So once all the research is done I get to writing. That’s usually just me locking myself in my room and forcing myself to write something until I come up with a 1000-word draft, then I edit it, adding bits here and there, contextualizing everything, adding some more character into each paragraph and dialogue, stuff like that. Then I proofread it once or twice (or thrice), then post.

...

Yeah, that’s right folks, a lot of the writing process is just forcing yourself to write.

A quick tangent before I continue, but something that’s always bugged me in certain writing circles is the idea of waiting for inspiration to come to you before write. Folks, I can honestly say that if you want to write a story or essay or anything, you have to force it out. Inspiration and the like will come when you’re about half way through writing your work when you start seeing more paragraphs in the first draft and less dialogue, or as you go through the editing process and just start adding bits. This very essay I’m writing now was just a few short 3 paragraphs I forced myself to jot down before getting to the editing process and now it’s over ten paragraphs and three parts. Just... lock yourself in your rooms and write if you want to write something.

But back on topic.

Like I said before, Rabid Avenger’s first chapter went through about 3 or 4 drafts before I was happy with it. It mostly came down to where I wanted to end the first chapter. The idea I wanted to play in the first chapter was that Touka was currently a hunter and, well, avenger for the ghouls of the 11th Ward that couldn’t defend themselves, give her a sympathetic cause for people to latch onto. We already know that Aogiri enslaves weaker ghouls and forces them into their fold, so having Touka being something of a vigilante against them seemed like a good way to get people to root for her. Once I established that I ended the chapter with something temporarily upset the status quo I had built up. Nothing that changes the plot, but introducing Akira helped add a bit of tension to the situation. This idea comes from a youtuber of the channel Overly Sarcastic Productions: establish normality, then take it away. I’ll admit, beginnings are never my forte when it comes to writing, and I always end up hating mine, but I think this concept helps me a little when it comes to dealing with my openings.

And finally, the proofreading phase. This is the hardest part since I’m still catching errors after the third reread and even after a fourth or fifth I still see error. Hell, you guys have probably found three or four in this essay, but... them’s the breaks I guess, it’s just a weakness of mine that I’m slowly, but surely getting better at.

Writing Fight Scenes

This is probably something I could go on about for paragraphs, but I’ll keep this short. Like I said before, I prefer writing, reading, and watching more action focused stories in a way similar to shounen. In terms of writing, I think the best thing I’ve read so far that hits my niche taste in terms of combat writing is currently the light novel series Magical Girl Raising Project. The fights in that series are usually done both in a surprisingly realistic fashion and written in a way that is paced well.

With this fanfic specifically I think the only hard part is properly writing in how kagune and quinque will play a part in the combat. And thankfully, I don’t have to worry about the pacing a fight being killed due to some flashier, bombastic power system that’ll have me be describing energy blasts and DBZ beam struggles. I think the flashiest thing in Part 1 was the concept of the kakuja, and I don’t plan on making that much of a thing in the fanfic in terms of combat, so I think I’m good there.

Ah, but back on topic. Despite my love and experience in writing them, fight scenes can be difficult to properly write since describing a lot of the flash ruins the pacing of the fight as a reader reads it. The best way to keep the tension and pacing a fight is to keep things short in terms of action, using the “hardest” adjectives you can, understanding that most fights end in only a few hits unless it’s something like a sanctioned MMA match or the like. Most of the advice I got for writing action comes from this post here, but a quick summary is to just remember IRL fights are quick and nasty, some liberties can be taken for the sake of narrative and flash, but just remember to keep them believable to an extent.

I mean, we’re talking about anime characters that can tank getting tossed into a wall and walk it off like it’s nothing after all, especially in a series as violent and brutal as Tokyo Ghoul.

Cameos

This is something I do specifically for my fanfics. When I need a character for something and no one in the immediate case can fit it for some reason I’ll usually stick in a Cameo of something that can. I did this a lot in my fanfic, Reversal Princess by using obscure fighting game characters for Aoi Umenokoji to fight and be rivals with since I couldn’t logically have Brad Burns just randomly appear in Japan and bug Aoi, and I... kinda’ forgot a Akira Yuki existed until around chapter 6. So, I had Yuka Takeuchi from Variable Geo be Aoi’s friendly rival for awhile, and played around with the fact that she canonically had siblings to make a more hostile rival in the form of Kuro, who’s based off of Kasumi Todoh from KoF.

Tokyo Ghoul is a little trickier since the cast is already large enough as is. You’d think that would mean I wouldn’t have stick in OCs or cameos, but I actually do. See, since Touka is, well, killing CCG and Aogiri members I can’t really use too many named cast members as fodder for her to kill. Akira is meant to be a main antagonist for Touka to hate and want to kill, not be killed off in the beginning as the first villain. So, I’ll have to make a few other characters to be the fodder/villains of the week for Touka to take out before having any main cast member outside of Akira and Eto being a real opponent. I’ve already got a few ideas in terms of what characters I’ll be using. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll just say they’re from some niche JRPGs I’ve been playing for the last few months or so.

General Writing Stuff

Before I close out this little essay I think I’ll just talk about some writing things and my short (read: blunt) opinions on certain aspects of writing and how I write in general.

The next time I read the phrase “said is dead” I’m blocking that blog. Said is not dead, it’s a perfectly fine verb to use when characters are just casually talking and you need to reaffirm who’s speaking what line in a conversation.

While I personally use adverbs sparingly for the sake of flow in my combat scenes I don’t see an issue with them so long as they aren’t over used. This allergic reaction to seeing adverbs is just stupid.

Purple prose is the spawn of Satan himself and people need to understand that more words do not equal a better story.

Why literally every action fanfic featuring that one side character in that obscure series I like is in Indonesian I will never know. That’s not a writing thing, that’s just me whining.

And I believe that’s it for this Dictator’s Works. Hopefully chapter 3 will wrap up before the end of this week. I’m still in the process of editing, so... who knows how long that’ll take. Seeing how this essay took all day I’m gonna’ take a break and play some Under Night In-Birth again, hopefully actually beat a Gordeau this time around online. In any case, I’ll see you all later.

#your dictator's works #tokyo ghoul #fanfiction #fanfic writing

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