The Sagas: A look back

The Core Media Forum
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As a treat for you board visitors, I decided to do a “behind-the-scenes”-esque post here. It reveals some stuff about the sagas (Mox, Daemon, and Naar). Anyway, enjoy.

Mox Saga: And So It Begins…

The Mox Saga was the first in the three sagas, and is in my opinion the best. It introduced many of the characters that would later appear in other sagas, such as Gemini, Blue Robe, and of course, Mox. The fight scenes were rather crude, but since I was just a beginning writer at the time, it was the best I could do.

How I came up with each character:

Mox: Mox originated as a character in FF Break Room. I tried to find something more plot-worthy than what was happening in the series, and a villain sprang to mind. I needed a name, though. My cousin inadverantly solved this when he babbled on about a game called, “Nox.” I thought the name was cool, so I took out the “N” and replaced it with an “M”. And thus, Mox was born.

The actual character’s design was completely last minute. I decided to give him some technology, such as a jetpack and guns, but I needed a clincher. Then I thought about knights, and the idea of black armor came into being. Also, Mox was originally going to be Bill Gates, not Magus, but I decided to change that at the last minute to add to the surprising turn.

The Mox that appears in the Mox Saga was a contradiction; he was a black mage that wore a huge suit of armor. I’m a fan of contradicting characters with their stereotypes, so this came easily. Mox’s guns were replaced with mage-like abilities, except for his laser, which was modeled after the Infanto-Ray from Space Ace (which sucks, but the name of the weapon was damn cool!).

Blue Robe: This was another case of me changing ideas. Originally, this was supposed to be another RPG character, although I won’t say who. Later on, I got the idea of making it someone that had fought Mox, and also looked like Galloway.

White Robe: She appeared at the last second, due to my laziness. Since Weiila is a white mage, I thought that someone that would look like her would wear a white robe. Too bad I didn’t change Blue Robe to Red Robe. I hate Blue Mages.

Frick and Frack: They’re an old joke, I know. The names were REALLY first introduced to me in Quest for Glory III; they were the bumbling demons guarding the prisoner. Since Frick and Frack in the Mox Saga are both bumbling FBI Agents, I thought the names were a perfect fit.

The Red Scare: This was from a horrible live-action version of the hilarious cartoon, “The Tick.” I thought that this would be a good opponent for Bill Gates. You be the judge!

Terry: He’s based off all of those minority-stereotyped assassins that populate the movies. The use of a sniper rifle is a popular one amongst assassins in hitting long-range targets, but using it up-close like Terry did is damn suicidal, as you won’t be able to line up the shot correctly.

Chainsaw: He’s based off my least-favorite boss ever; the third boss from Splatterhouse 1. In that game, the boss was a thinly-veiled parody of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with the guy having a leather sack instead of a mask.

(I’ll put up more later)…

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Meliah and Falchin: I really hated what happened to Mox’s kids. Originally, they had a much larger role in the plot than they actually ended up with. Meliah wasn’t a wuss, Falchin wasn’t a moron, and Mox didn’t like either one. Instead, Meliah barely gets any airtime, Falchin gets his ass kicked by Spinach, and Mox likes Falchin for a while.

Hunter: I needed a sidekick for my bro, a friend of his of sorts. I came up with Hunter. He was a wuss, but still fought. However, all three ninjas dissapeared during the whole issue with Mox and the Black Mage Village, except for Gemini, who reappeared towards the end. Yet another cutback I hate myself for.

Sensei: Like the name implies, he’s the “master” of Gemini and Hunter. I based him around those little asian guys from kung fu movies, as well as Arnold from Happy Days.

Don Cristo: I’m part Italian, so I have the right to mock my heritage. Don Cristo was just meant to be the stereotypical mob boss that talks in unpronouncable english, due to his Italian accent.

Fargo: He isn’t worth the time to talk about. He acted like an interperter from all those gangster movies. He’s the guy that repeats whatever the mob boss just said.

Neo: His name means, “New,” or something like that. He’s the “New” Galloway.

There are other characters, but they don’t need to be mentioned here, as they’re either self-explanatory or simply from other games.

What got axed:

A lot. Eventually, I felt that the fic was just dragging on, so I cut a lot of stuff so I could get it done. Here’s what dissapeared:
*Many characters and games
*A rematch between Galloway and Bear
*Falchin falling in love with one of the female characters
*Meliah’s pregnancy (carried into Naar Saga, although with a different father)
*An actual final battle with Mox.
*A real ending. The one I had made Soul Reaver’s ending look like a masterpiece.
*The connection between Blue Robe and Galloway, and White Robe and Weiila
*The story behind Neo and Galloway’s origins

There’s more of that, too, but this is the jest of it.

Overall:

I loved working on the Mox Saga, but things eventually spiraled out of control in my life and in the fic. So I ended it early. Sorry if I angered anyone in doing this. Still, it IS my favorite saga.

(next time: the Daemon Saga)

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Daemon Saga: Electric Boogaloo

After the success of the Mox saga, I went to work on the Super-Happy-Big-BIG FF Break Room. Anticipating a much-waited return to the series, I even introduced a mysterious cloaked villain, thus giving some plot fodder to the fic. However, it soon came to me that the villain would be better if he had some kind of motive. Tha’ts where everything went wrong.

I wrote a Break Room where the man, Daemon, was talking to a big shadow that mentioned a connection between him and Mox. However, putting Mox in that sentence killed the character’s chances of ever appearing in Break Room again; it meant that the story would be too big for the Break Room to hold.

And thus, the Daemon Saga, the worst of the three by far, was born. It would take days to explain everything that went wrong with this fic. The jokes were just recycled from Mox saga, the villains (including Daemon) lacked Mox’s coolness, and the plot was absolutely terrible.

(I’ll continue on my rant later)

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Nice, Gallo. It’s cool to get some insight.

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Character section:

Daemon: Like Mox, I envisioned Daemon as a kind of wizard. I opted for the "guy in black robe) this so many games and stories use. As for the Talisman…don’t ask me how I came up with that.

Red Phoenix: A phoenix is reborn when it dies. Thus, Red Phoenix is constantly able to come back in other forms. The red part comes from the MERC naming system; every codename starts with a color. It’s also ironic that the person who trapped him as a cyborg, Galloway, is named, “Red Dragon.”

Loria and Slaver: Ask Weiila, okay? I don’t understand Swedish people!

(more will come later)

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Loria: Queen of Morentsia, a magical alien race looking like humans with huge butterfly wings. I’m not sure how I made her up, but it was something about a dream. About Turtles. So I don’t know where she fits in, but that dream had to do with it…

Slaver: Enemy of Loria and her people, looks like a cloud of mist with red eyes. Can change his shape. Likes to imprison people, but not kill per say. Also likes shackles and is one hella schizofrenic villain as he tends to help Loria against other meanies.

There :slight_smile:

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Hook: I’m a fan of contradictory humor; that is, putting two things together that shouldn’t normally belong in the same spot. The hook was inspired by the famous urban legend about a mass murderer with a hook for an arm. The fact that he’s super-intelligent and friendly contradicts the psychopath of the legend.

I also went overboard on the DBZ parodies. I added the concept of fusion to the fic, thus creating Ultra Galloway and Weihra. New attacks were devised around energy blasts and flying. People soon began to boo at this fic. I can’t blame them.

Fortunately, my chance for redemption came with the third, and possibly final saga, Naar.

The Naar Saga: Destiny Sucks

The Naar Saga was my one last chance to save the series after the failure that was Daemon. Instead of creating my own villain, I took one from one of my favorite book series: Lone Wolf. I then added more characters into the mix, simmered for five minutes, stired, boiled, stired again, and drained for maximum effectiveness.

(more to come later)

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With the Naar Saga came another change; the addition of RPGC people. I made a sign-up thread, created a small template for the bios, and waited. However, I didn’t spell things out clearly enough, and got stuck with only a few things to work with. Well, at least I tried.

Plot-wise, I still depended on the greatest thing someone can ask for when writing a fic like this: ideas that spring up out of nowhere. I have NO clue how half of the stuff that happened here came to me (it may have just been some bad chinese food or something), but it worked out for the best…sometimes. I have some sources here, though:

The Balding Men: I love “Who’s Line is it Anyway?”. Even now, as the show gets shuffled around randomly and censored to hell, I still watch it. Anyway, one episode had “Headlines that you would like to see,” and Colin went up and said, “Balding Men best lovers in the world!” We all laughed. I then used the joke briefly in the Mox Saga, but when I needed something to fill in the bottom of an episode, I made the “Land of Balding Men”, with Colin as their king, leading a crusade to get at Naar for destroying Rogain factories.

Digimon: Okay, I’ll admit it: I still love Digimon. Even with a dubbing that makes DBZ look like Shakespear, it’s a good watch. Anyway, I did this simply to add some minor plot fodder. Then it ballooned into what you’ve seen from the latest chapters. Do I hate myself for it? No. Now excuse me while I download a couple more episodes…

The Flying Bunker: This was when I hung out at the chat room, before it became a shitty place to be. I was pretty lamerish back then, so I created the Flying Bunker, a nearly impenetrable fortress. However, the first one got taken down when Cless the Moogle sicked Zerglings on it, the second blew up in a freak accident, and the third was destroyed when Booken tossed some dynamite inside. The fourth never got off the ground, and the fifth…well, what happened is explained in Part 8.

The Female Galloway: I believe that there are unlimited dimensions, each slightly different from the others. So it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination that there’s a strong version of Galloway that’s also a girl. Oh, and don’t worry about a male Weiila; I have my limits.

Talk Fu: This was an actual joke in QFG4. Inside the Adventurers’ Guild is a book called “Talk Fu”, but you never get to learn this ancient art. I guess reading “HERO” magazine and a book of one-syllable words about climbing is more interesting than the oriental arts. Of course, I HAD to include it into the fic. It was simply too good to pass up.

If it isn’t mentioned here, it was probably spur-of-the-moment.

(more will come later on)

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This isn’t dead. I swear.

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/Me thinks this thread needs comments from someone other than Weiila. Therefore, here I go:

First of all, d, not all Fan Writers have the guts to try to explain their creative process in public, so kudos.

Second, I have to congratulate you on your rampaging creativity. You seem to have a “stream-of-consciousness” style of writing, that is, you throw in anything that inspires you, which is a lot, and somehow the whole thing works well, most of the time. I can’t do that, at least not most of the time; I’m a VERY methodical writer. I prefer to use stablished characters (or at least create new characters from existing concepts, rather than out of whole cloth) and have the story VERY well plotted out before I actually write it. I think my strenght lies in characterizing them realistically; I like to get into someone’s head and ask, “WHY does he or she do that?” Ocassionally I’ll be more freeform, and I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s not my normal style.

Thanks for having shared your insights with us, they certainly help appreciate your stories better. Keep up the good work.

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And now, the process of writing a saga chapter.

  1. Bang head repeatadly against wall.
  2. Overdose on anti-depressants
  3. Repeat step 1
  4. Find some inspiration for next chapter
  5. Repeat step 1
  6. Write chapter (takes about 20-30 minutes)
  7. Repeat step 1
  8. Post response
  9. Repeat step 1
  10. Sleep through the night worrying about what to do next
  11. Repeat step 1

My walls need to be repaired. Badly.

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Oh, don’t worry Gallo, there’s people for this. Magus, fix Gallo’s wall or I’ll write a CT/FF6 crossover with Kerr toddling along.