To OC-ize or not to OC-ize
Apr. 3rd, 2019 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
general_radixSo I had this thought earlier today that I might be better off turning my Sonic Boom AU into an original thing rather than let the ideas I had for it languish in "that fic's never getting finished" territory. Very short version: still at the deciding stage.
Once upon a time (specifically 2014 or so), I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sonic Boom, a whole new branch of the Sonic series; the primary fiction would be a TV show, with Rise of Lyric serving as a sort of prequel. (There was also Shattered Crystal, and later Fire and Ice, for the 3DS, but the former's place in continuity is...dubious) RoL really held my attention, as it was gonna be a story-focused game in a series whose plot angle had sort of fallen by the wayside. I also love speculation, so I figured, "why not write a whole dang speculative fic and see how it compares to canon later?"
Long story short, I did start on it before RoL came out and managed to get several chapters in before losing steam (I didn't get a whole lotta feedback, among other things). The "let's see how comically off I end up being" part did pan out, at least; I'd wager that about not-point-one percent of what I came up with was canon-accurate.
The AU (formally titled "Beyond the Black Horizon" aka the Horizon-verse, named after a Babylon Zoo lyric) would've involved a different breed of time travel shenanigans than the final game, eldritch gods (with the ones the party encountered being the last living ones), more of an arc of Sonic learning to regard his new companions as friends (there was supposed to be one in the actual game, but apparently it got cut down, because God forbid SEGA let their writers do more things with Sonic), Lyric as a conflicted, grieving "noble demon" type (as opposed to a nihilist lashing out at the closest proxies of the source of his misery, which is "anything squishy and organic, but especially those stuck-up bastards I used to work with"), the Enerbeams as ancient weapons of great importance, and a lot of references to/borrowed concepts from Gnosticism. To name a few things.
IIRC a friend of mine advised me to go the all-original route on the grounds that my ideas were kinda wasted on a sub-series which turned out to be fairly divisive (like, slightly more than usual for this fandom). I was hesitant to at the time, but now I've been reconsidering; problem is, despite being way off from canon, BtBH was still had lots of Sonic DNA, so taking care of that might be a challenge...
--
Commence spitballing.
* Sonic-equivalent would probably still be a loner with dubious social skills and have "Zephyros" somewhere in their name (his full name in BtBH was "Zephyros Veloi Sonic"). Thinking of making them female here, since I've already got several dude heroes.
* I had a potential alternate name for Not Lyric picked out once, but can't find it again. :/ In BtBH, Lyric's conflict with Sonic revolved around the former's centuries-long stasis and the loss of his companions (Lyric believing Sonic had sealed him off); not sure if that would be the same here, but I do want to keep Not Lyric as an immortal cyborg with enough arm/back strength to dual-wield energy swords. He probably won't have a robot army, though.
* In BtBH, Amy was an amateur archaeologist and Knuckles did various odd jobs to support himself (mostly nature photography); their OC counterparts would probably be the same way (Not Tails might have to do something else). I'd like to keep Not Sticks as the "other" wild child of the group, but I don't think I wanna copy Actual Sticks's paranoid conspiracy theorist shtick. (Not Sticks might also be a beastwoman of some sort, because apparently I can't resist adding furries to settings that they have even a tiny sliver of plausibility in. :U )
* Not sure if I want to bring over all the Holy Crystals (aka speculative Chaos Crystals from the game proper) or only a few. The Vanitas Crystal was kind of vitally-important to BtBH, so if the crystals are kept, it'll have to stay somehow.
* No planned Eggman equivalent as of yet. At minimum, I want to Not Rouge as an antagonist and Not Silver as an ally (note: neither character has a canon Boom self, to my knowledge).
Once upon a time (specifically 2014 or so), I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sonic Boom, a whole new branch of the Sonic series; the primary fiction would be a TV show, with Rise of Lyric serving as a sort of prequel. (There was also Shattered Crystal, and later Fire and Ice, for the 3DS, but the former's place in continuity is...dubious) RoL really held my attention, as it was gonna be a story-focused game in a series whose plot angle had sort of fallen by the wayside. I also love speculation, so I figured, "why not write a whole dang speculative fic and see how it compares to canon later?"
Long story short, I did start on it before RoL came out and managed to get several chapters in before losing steam (I didn't get a whole lotta feedback, among other things). The "let's see how comically off I end up being" part did pan out, at least; I'd wager that about not-point-one percent of what I came up with was canon-accurate.
The AU (formally titled "Beyond the Black Horizon" aka the Horizon-verse, named after a Babylon Zoo lyric) would've involved a different breed of time travel shenanigans than the final game, eldritch gods (with the ones the party encountered being the last living ones), more of an arc of Sonic learning to regard his new companions as friends (there was supposed to be one in the actual game, but apparently it got cut down, because God forbid SEGA let their writers do more things with Sonic), Lyric as a conflicted, grieving "noble demon" type (as opposed to a nihilist lashing out at the closest proxies of the source of his misery, which is "anything squishy and organic, but especially those stuck-up bastards I used to work with"), the Enerbeams as ancient weapons of great importance, and a lot of references to/borrowed concepts from Gnosticism. To name a few things.
IIRC a friend of mine advised me to go the all-original route on the grounds that my ideas were kinda wasted on a sub-series which turned out to be fairly divisive (like, slightly more than usual for this fandom). I was hesitant to at the time, but now I've been reconsidering; problem is, despite being way off from canon, BtBH was still had lots of Sonic DNA, so taking care of that might be a challenge...
--
Commence spitballing.
* Sonic-equivalent would probably still be a loner with dubious social skills and have "Zephyros" somewhere in their name (his full name in BtBH was "Zephyros Veloi Sonic"). Thinking of making them female here, since I've already got several dude heroes.
* I had a potential alternate name for Not Lyric picked out once, but can't find it again. :/ In BtBH, Lyric's conflict with Sonic revolved around the former's centuries-long stasis and the loss of his companions (Lyric believing Sonic had sealed him off); not sure if that would be the same here, but I do want to keep Not Lyric as an immortal cyborg with enough arm/back strength to dual-wield energy swords. He probably won't have a robot army, though.
* In BtBH, Amy was an amateur archaeologist and Knuckles did various odd jobs to support himself (mostly nature photography); their OC counterparts would probably be the same way (Not Tails might have to do something else). I'd like to keep Not Sticks as the "other" wild child of the group, but I don't think I wanna copy Actual Sticks's paranoid conspiracy theorist shtick. (Not Sticks might also be a beastwoman of some sort, because apparently I can't resist adding furries to settings that they have even a tiny sliver of plausibility in. :U )
* Not sure if I want to bring over all the Holy Crystals (aka speculative Chaos Crystals from the game proper) or only a few. The Vanitas Crystal was kind of vitally-important to BtBH, so if the crystals are kept, it'll have to stay somehow.
* No planned Eggman equivalent as of yet. At minimum, I want to Not Rouge as an antagonist and Not Silver as an ally (note: neither character has a canon Boom self, to my knowledge).
no subject
Date: 2019-04-05 06:13 am (UTC)This looks really interesting so far! I'm afraid I probably have a hard time keeping up and understanding it all. But it has certainly sparked my nostalgia.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-05 01:31 pm (UTC)