Guidelines, Ditching A Bunch Of Old Tropes And Attitudes

Fictionlands and its rp/writing forum is not your average fiction site.

There are things we do not like seeing done to well-established famous fictional characters, and there are trends we are not having our regular characters engaging in either. There are so many trends that just about everyone seems to be in love with that we are not.

So here's what is happening on the Fictionlands main site and forum, especially the fiction megamix rp/writing and foefiction sections.

Many trends are being tossed.

To start with, the main site is run by two Christian women, and the forum is currently managed by one of them. So this is a Christian-friendly site. It is not friendly toward people who proudly proclaim or otherwise whinge on about how they hate religion, which usually translates as "I don't believe in God and I think Christians are stupid and Christianity sucks." This is no place for anti-Christian attitudes and anti-Christian fiction.

We're sick of it.

Tired Of The antiChristian Sentiment Online

that doesn't mean we're a site for what has commonly become known as specifically Christian rpg" Here, Christian-friendly does not mean you must be restricted to writing battles with angels and demons, battles between ancient tribes from biblical times, struggling against "sin" or having Satan as a character to be rped and eventually defeated. I really don't care to rp any of those except in non-fantasy historic fiction without actually rping famous real historical people, though... As for historic fiction, I'm better at watching movies of it than rping it, though you are welcome to rp that genre in the original or fan fiction sections of the forum.

Christian-friendly means not getting bogged down messing about with fake religions and calling it fantasy. It doesn't mean elf = pagan, normal human being = Christian etc. In our Christian-friendly setup, we have fairies, elves, even alien humans from different planets as Christians, or without religion being touched on at all.

We're not sticking to just fan fiction or just original character fiction, nor do we keep those separate, on the main site or the megamix forum. Just because some canon character was in some specific setting during the series/book doesn't mean they have to be stuck there and all original characters moved to that setting, unless you are rping on the fan fiction section.

Characters, canon or made up by us, can come and go wherever they're needed if we can find a way to make that happen.

Fantasy doesn't mean Medieval Europe. Here is an excellent article that tells it like it is and in a more eloquent way than I could. Since the fiction megamix and the fiction lands main site has characters from different series, including magical and super-powered ones interacting in modern times, it's like the article said, there will be elves having barbecues in the backyard, and fairies doing space travel. Etc. etc.

So many role-plays and fiction writing have fallen into the same old trends I just never warmed up to, and would like to avoid on the main site and fiction megamix forum. It applies to the main FL site as well. But not necessarily to the fan fiction or original fiction sections of the forums except for creepy pasta characters being killable, and no porn/erotica...On that, I will insist.

So instead of being creeped out or having crushes on blood-thirsty characters such as Slender Man, Laughing Jack, Jeff The Killer, Michael Myers, Lady Une, Treize Khushrenada, Zechs Milliardo Marquise Peacecraft etc. we show them no fear and no adoration/love. This is where foefiction comes in. Take A Hike and Twi-Twitted are Twilight foefiction.

Religion and religious rites.

That stuff is being way overdone everywhere just as with the shipping (character pairings).

Sure, characters will have religious persuasions or at least a set of standards they set for themselves. So a Christian or Jewish character will act according to what their beliefs are, in any given situation, but that won't be the focus.

Some character may be mentioned as saying a prayer or singing in a church choir, but we do not write characters interacting directly with God, we do not write a fictionalized version of God.

Likewise, we do not give Satan that treatment either.

Nor do we write angels, especially those mentioned in the Bible into our fiction. Fictionalized versions of Biblical characters are out of the question. Again, mentioning them during character conversations as we sometimes may in real life is fine. Making fictionalized versions of them, not so much.

We avoid this because 1. we don't want to trivialize biblical people, 2. we make no time for the devil, and last, but not least, 3. we do not wish to disrespect God by putting him into some role, saying and doing stuff in a piece of fiction as if he was just some character.

We don't fool around with gods and goddesses, priests/priestesses of some strange made-up religion, which is already over-running gaming and is extremely common in role-plays that are si-fi, "fantasy" and various anime.

When what's supposed to be fantasy has been turned into a paganism promo or an exercise in how to build up a false religion from the ground up, it gets very convoluted and boring, very fast, and when all out hostility towards Christianity is thrown in, it really sucks.

Our regular characters oppose those who go around acting as if they think they are gods and goddesses.

I'm interested in learning about history of different real peoples and their beliefs, anything from medicine to religion, but that's learning about the way people live and why their cultures are the way they are. It isn't wasting time on characters on a daily basis that I can't relate to because they worship some fake deity that I just don't give a crap about.

RP isn't education, it's a hobby, and for me, a means of expression to some degree.

I'm aware that even Christian rp-ers and fantasy authors have and mess about with fake religion and deities in their literature. But it just isn't my thing. Besides, I don't know enough about other belief systems to convincingly rp characters that have them, nor do I have any interest whatsoever in making them up, beyond the Hamgod, which is a stupid little deity made up by Gundam Wing trolls and is something to be mocked. Scumbag characters may worship and call on the Hamgod. Our regular characters ridicule it.

None of that demon possession/soul-stealing, and ousting it with crucifixes/exorcisms/holy water etc. That's done to death elsewhere, and tends to make Christians look like desperate, superstitious fools. No horrible stereotypes of "Christian" fanatics. That is already being done in far too many mainstream TV shows and fantasy role-plays with a decidedly anti-Christian bent. You know the sort, where some whacko believes electronics are of the devil, and who beats their kid for looking the wrong way because of that "Spare the rod and spoil the child" thing, and who is more than likely to have their kid half killed during an exorcism because the kid talked out of turn during school prayers or something.

Even fake religions are treated as something to mock in games according to this article. I disagree with the writer's take on that Noah movie, and am convinced it was deliberately distorted to make a bible figure look like a crazy misanthrope. Hollywood is not kind toward biblical or Christian either.

Having said all that, it doesn't mean our regular characters never run up against cults, it just means that situation would be exceedingly rare, they oppose the cult, and not through the use of rather notorious religious rites such as exorcism.

Instead, they would use magic to stop a being such as Slender Man, and detective work and similar to expose the cult as a big fraud.

Magic: Acceptable VS. Unacceptable

acceptable: Make-believe magic.

Some of our characters are fantasy beings, but not pagan.

The magic written here is pure fantasy, as in "Once upon a time" where various imaginary places and things have strange properties and powers that don't exist in the real world. This magic has no ties whatsoever with paganism, and is better described as a superpower without a cause, and with no bonds to elements of nature. She or he didn't get the ability through botched science experiment or exposure to some strange formula or chemical. She or he just has it because it's part of his or her being. Call it magic or energy, either works.

The other acceptable magic is of the carnival variety, as in the magic shows sometimes put on to amaze people of all ages with slight of hand tricks and the like.

None of that has anything whatsoever to do with actual pagan rituals or beliefs, which have permeated so much of the fantasy genre.

Unacceptable: pagan/occult, including necromancy.

No pagan magic or rituals for our regular characters.

You have to believe in or at least be a lot more interested in it than we are to pull it off. Pagan influence is already everywhere in fantasy themed communities, and necromancy is simply gross as well as against pretty much everything we stand for here.

Our characters also don't fool around with angel/demon magic such as Enochian magic. Demons come from hell, which is the worst form of afterlife, and angels are sacred, also appearing in the Bible, and innocent purely make-believe magic can't touch the afterlife, it deals with characters during their lives and doesn't interfere with the sacred nor has anything to do with hell.

While some character might be referred to affectionately as an angel, or in disgust as a demon, it's not meant literally.

Necromancy. The rather accidental fumbling into some plot on an rp long ago was my first encounter with the idea, and it involved some decomposed body being re-animated. Ugh! Not to mention the general occult rather than fantasy feel to the whole thing. but that gross body bit was enough to put me off the idea of necromancy for good. Eww, no! Just, no!

We don't literally have characters coming back from the dead, no character is powerful enough to rase themselves or anyone from death,; although going MIA and believed to be dead by fellow characters may happen, very rarely, and for good reason. None of this soap opera stuff where A and B just get married and B suddenly has an accident or disappears and is "dead" until A eventually gets involved with and marries D, only for B to suddenly come back from the "dead" just to get another stupid love triangle thing going. You can go ahead and do that on the fan fiction and original fiction sections if that's what you're into.

Mary Sue

We do our best to treat characters worthy of respect, with respect.

We also give disrespectible characters, famous or otherwise, something most often not doled out by fandoms. But then, we are not fandom-friendly We are fanbase, specifically casual fan-friendly. There is a difference between that and fandoms, which are the cultish/fanatic part of a fanbase, and Mary Sues run rampant.

On a list I ran, there was this extreme Mary Sue, and it was hard to tell writer and character apart. She got on the list and posted a horrific fan fiction where everybody in the series the list was about, was godmoded into catering to her character's every whim and wild, irrational mood swings. And her character trash-talked, misbehaved, treated everyone like crap while feeling terribly sorry for herself. And get this. she was blind, but could tell when someone looked at her dress. She hauled some boy out on a dance floor, too. In an unfamiliar setting I might add. And wow did her writer ever blow a thousand gaskets when I told her that her "blind" character was not realistic, nor was she going to get away with acting like that. She made ridiculous excuses, told me that allowances should be made for the "poor little blind orphan" and then she resorted to personal attacks. I kicked her off the list and shut it down since people were more interested in shipping on other lists. Bleckh.

On another list, a writer tried to make her characters the centre of the whole setting. So much that their ancestors were the founders of the setting, and the main canon character's life would end if her original character's did. It was all really convoluted. And she threw some kink into things too. She also tried to get a romance going between one of my characters and one of hers (a human version of a canon character that was actually an ape). I wasn't into it, and getting my character romantically involved with any canon character, even if it was an altered one, would make my character instantly a Mary Sue. She also had a thing for bad boys. I didn't, and neither did one of my characters whom had just gotten out of another situation where some other characters had fallen for this arrogant bad boy bully on the rp he totally sabotaged with his divisiveness.

Still another player was constantly angsting about how her life sucked and nobody cared about her. She didn't take it well when people finally stopped playing into her attention-seeking.

Soul-binding/stealing.

Your soul is yours, it's what makes you you, it can't be stolen/possessed by another. And that is that.

So Jeff The Killer may consider himself a demon, he is certainly as evil as one. Other characters may call him one. But no matter what damage he does to body and mind, he can't take someone's soul for himself, and drag it down to hell.

The bonding/fusing of one life to another.

It could be called a soul-bond, or bonding of the heart, but it's bad jou-jou either way.

At its most basic form, the life/heart/soul bond is written in just because some character can't stand on their own and needs to be linked tightly as possible to another character the writer is in love with.

That goes especially sour when it's some fan-created character said to be bonded to a famous fictional. That means when the fan-created character's life is threatened, so is the famous fictional's because of the bond.

Can you say uber Mary Sue?

The life/heart/soul bond is often if not mostly brought about by occult/pagan ritual, not innocent make-believe magic, and is employed by especially evil sadistic characters as vampires who bond others to themselves as slaves.

that is something none of our regular characters would ever do.

They may uncover instances of it having been done by some evil character or other, but the undoing of such is always the aim, and done with as little muss and fuss as possible on the fiction megamix and the FL main site.

Pairings, procreation, lost relatives, Sue.

Characters are not all paired off. Sure, there are going to be some mention of romantic involvement among characters here and there, including mentions of past romances, but it's not by any stretch a main goal to pair off characters. To put it another way, sometimes romance just happens, and that is how it ought to be.

Vampy love.

Uh, no, we don't think that's a cool ideal to promote.

Vampires are predators, people are their prey. So only an idiot human or another vamp thinks vamps are sexy. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be such idiot characters from time to time, but it means you won't find this behaviour coming from our well-established regular characters.

Multiple births.

Switched at birth. Twins. Long lost twin, good VS. evil twin, Overkilled, from online rps to TV shows. all that has become so cliche. That can be done on the fanfic/original fiction sections if it's your thing.

Apocalyptic/Futuristic.

Apocalyptic and post apocalyptic.

Bleh! Slightly depressing, and way overdone. So we're not doing that here except in the fanfic or original fic sections if that's your thing..

On the first rp list I ever joined, I got a character out of a convoluted plot by having her get injured and sick, and when this writer revealed to me she wanted my character to become impregnated with some apocalyptic child, I said no way in heck and put my character at death's door. Besides, that RP was already so full of pregnancies and multiple births anyway it was really getting annoying. If someone wants their own character to get pregnant, that's their decision, but they should definitely not try to scheme/trap someone else's character into it without the other writer being fully on board with it.

I eventually quit the first list because I was so freaking sick of all the Christian-mocking crap as well as sacreligeous cruft that involved people playing biblical personalities intermarrying or becoming items with fictional TV show characters and the like. There was even a player who role-played God, a huge no-no from where I stand. Other non-angel/demon/Bible personality characters were totally cool if they were pagan but horrendous bad stereotypical fundies and utterly ridiculed by other characters when they were supposedly "Christian". Even if they were good representations of Christians, such as my lot, they were still flamed all to heck by other characters. There were also these invincible sadistic characters that got away with everything and all manner of disgusting. conversations IC had also turned to nothing more than schoolyard name-calling. It looked more like a 4chan board than a role-play. OOC conversations weren't much better, because writers didn't get along and would lose it when they couldn't get their way.

Futuristic.

Writing stories that take place in the future is also way overdone, and we have no idea what the real future will bring anyway.

There is some appreciated classic stuff around that takes place in a fictionalized future, "The Time Machine" "The Jetsons" and that's cool. Our characters just don't live there or in any permanent fictionalized version of the future. They might transport through a fictionalized timewarp into a future setting of some classic such as The time Machine or The Jetsons world, but we're not making up our own version of the future or bothering much with others that are less well known unless it's to take some famous character and shift them to our present time on megamix, or in a dream or vision had by a character to alter their actions and attitude in some way. An ongoing rp set firmly in a future time period, like one set in the past, can be done on fanfic/original fiction.

When I used to be on a rpg/writing list, there was a project started by one of the moderators there that was supposed to be some sort of writing/thinking exercise, where we were supposed to write our characters 20 years into the future.

I had absolutely no ideas nor interest, but some person I was writing with at the time, who was trying to get one of her characters and one of mine together in a possible romantic relationship which I was never comfortable with, and that also would've had to happen in the future because my character was so young. She wrote a story about her character and mine married in the future. And what was the big tada moment she wrote for mine? Pregnancy. Gah! I couldn't figure out how to tell her I utterly hated it. I would've rather she just had my character written in as absent due to being out on some mission.

and since she and I split long ago, and I since quit that list anyway, that pathetic version of the future is thankfully out of the question for my character.

Alternate "universe" stuff.

There is only one universe. that is why it is called the universe. So we don't use "universe" to describe a setting of a series. Our universe is big enough for all the make-believe worlds and settings we can come up with.

If a canon character is all out evil in a series, we don't make or accept alternate versions of that character as a good guy/girl on fiction megamix. The last time somebody tried getting me and my characters into that scenario was gagworthy to say the least. I couldn't wait to get my characters out of the morbid depressing endless hellhole plots she kept coming up with, couldn't wait to see the last of this one character who was finally ended, and she kept trying to come up with ways to bring him back, like she was in some sort of awe/love and couldn't let him go, and for the life of me I just don't get why. He was a total creep. She could come up with the most twisted ideas. I'd just get through with one exhausting situation, and she'd come up with another that was just as hellish and cringy. She had two different women, on two different occasions, begging to get beat up because they thought it would make the world a better place somehow - and all because they were riddled with guilt and fear thanks to that sadistic creep.

She fought hard to keep me on the list, or to get me coming back. I returned once, but left and didn't look back. Things hadn't changed.

Even when she and I tried rping on different lists, that I ran, which had much lighter settings, she still found a way to ram this creep in by the back door. through some character's nightmares, which one of my characters would always have to suffer through hearing about. When I managed to separate those characters, she rped on another list with me and tried to manipulate things in order to bring him back via inverted parallel universe deal where he was supposed to be a good guy now, and one of my characters, who had been his sworn enemy, was supposed to save him.

She did too many other things as well, and one of those was writing every evil character with a ton of attitude, and every character who was decent, had absolutely no guts and/or no power. And when her characters supposedly turned from bad to good, she also went from tough talking, swaggering "Nobody's the boss of me!" to a sickeningly simpering spineless wuss.

So go ahead with the parallel but opposite world sort of thing in the fan/original fiction sections if you like doing that, just not in the crossover/megamix. Megatron doesn't get to be a good guy. Optimus Prime doesn't get to turn evil. No, we don't accept "Optimus Crime" here.

And the deplorable shabby treatment via character mangling done to Spider Man by Dan Slott gets thumbs down all around!

Jeff the Killer doesn't get to die, only to return from the dead as Jeff the Gentle. His character is too far gone for that.

Humanifying animal characters, (I.E. Equestria Girls *cough*), or kawaii-ing (turning human characters into animals)

A character can take another form temporarily from an enchantment, or it's some kind of fairy or wizard or magical shapeshifter deliberately assuming a different form for a specific purpose, but that's just magic, not "alternate universe".

Mythos/Memes

we are not mythos/meme-friendly. That's why there is a section dedicated to meme-mangling AKA chain-smashing.

No really. Christians who don't like and don't believe memes/chain letters!

Something else I'm so FREAKING sick of is supposed hoax-busters/debunkers turning out to be atheist and/or liberal. *Facepalm* Yeah, that matters. Because we need a considerable force against internet nonsense to be Christian. Especially considering all the memes posing as "Christian" getting busted on sites that turn out to be non-Christian.

More trends that won't be indulged here are:

Otakuism! It's fine to just like anime, to even like some of it a lot, as a sensible, casual fan. It is not fine to go fandom over it. That's annoying as heck especially to anyone else who just isn't into it.

Harry Potter And The Twilight Hunger Games!

Hunger Games.

Another post apocalyptic dystopia.

No thanks! Oh, you can muck about with those in the fan fiction section, but not the megamix. Thanks.

Why The Hunger Games Made Me Literally Sick - readersandwritersparadise.com Excellent article!

Away with Harry Potter too. Yes, it's fantasy, but like Twilight and Hunger Games, it was such an annoying fad, becoming a meme, and just not all that interesting. None of our characters would fit into that wizarding world anyway, especially our elves. You can HP all you like in the fan fiction section, but really, there are so many other rps doing HP already.

Twilight.

We learned enough about that series to know we didn't like it. So we didn't write Twilight fan fiction, we wrote Twilight foe fiction.

Creepy pastas get the same treatment here.

MLP My Little Pony

Now that is creepy.

It's a meme started by 4chan trolls, and its fans rally to its defence with the ferocity of any Twi-tard or otaku to their own fandoms.

and for those of us who never even cared about MLP when it originated back in the 80s as some little show and line of plastic merchandise, the resurgence of it in the form of this meme and rabid fandom has turned us completely and irreversibly off it.

So MLP presents a horror to our regular characters, not a friend. A good source of menace, actually.

New Home Horrors and MLP Syndrome are not stand-alone MLP foefics, but MLPfoefic in attitude. 'They are just sections within a hypothetical story about non-MLP characters.

Anti-bronies!

No! Get away!

It might come as a surprise and make you wonder, but We hate anti-brony as much as MLP, and here's why.

The creepy evil furby/furby=gremlin thing.

Away with it!

Creepy furby has become another annoying mythos, it is almost impossible to find anything furby-related containing discussions where there isn't anyone at some point talking about how creepy they think furbies are. And the old "Don't feed them after midnight" thing. *Facepalm* Just kill it already!

That doesn't mean there are no evil furbies or that our regular furbies are always nice. Like any characters, there are going to be good and bad ones. But like any other character, if a furby is going to be bad, there's going to be a reason for it and a purpose that doesn't come down to the fraidy-cat mindset "Eeeeek, furby is a demonic gremlin and so creeeeeeepy!"

Gremlins.

In a word: suck!

The story used an old stupid urban legend chain letter story about a father who died stuck in a chimney trying to play Santa. But that isn't the worst. At the end of the movie, and probably the book as well, I don't remember for sure, but the movie, this old guy who took Gismo back went on this big sanctimonious rant of environmentalist contempt for the human race wind-baggery about how humans were killing the planet with this and that and this and that, and how "Human is not ready for maugui" or however the heck that stupid word for baby gremlin is spelled.

So, fooey on gremlins! We don't want 'em, in original form or as some weird gremlin/furby hybrid.

Cthulhu.

No thanks!

There's all sorts of twisted gunk from necromancy to emersion in some fake religion that, like anything Lovecraft, it's boring and horrific all at once. It's no longer fantasy as we know and love it, but some kind of experimental fiction.

--

There was an article in some newsletter I got around Christmas one year, and it talked about replacing Christmas with some made up holiday in December for is-fi and fantasy writing/rp. *Facepalm* I screamed. Seriously: Why not just get rid of the whole shebang, then? Get rid of our twelve-month year, get rid of the week days, the months, and their names too. Just get rid of the whole freaking lot if you're going to make a fake holiday just to kick anything to do with Christ out of your precious fictional worlds...! Why not construct a world where you have 26 hour days, 9 days a week, 28 days a month, yada yada...?

On an rp forum, Poster 1 submitted a thread on a different writing/role-play site called "Unpopular opinions!" in which he said he held some unpopular opinions, wondered who else had some, and said what some of his own were.

Poster1: otakus, I was one myself once and since I got out of that phase I really can't stand all that "nyaa" and "senpai" anymore.

-I don't think animals are worth more than humans or are any better than us, I read stuff like this on a daily basis, from animals activists who claim humans would be "poison" or a "plague" and that all humans should die... that really grinds my gears, of course there are cruel humans, but not even the majority is bad, in fact it makes you more heartless than some cruel people to wish some innocent children death for the sake of an animals.

Ocean Elf: That really made my day.

But immediately after, came this all-too common stink.

Poster2: I hate religion. But let the people do as they want.
I love anime. Not a weeaboo or otaku, but its a respectable art like movies.

implodingHeads likes this.

Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* There is no such thing as weeaboos. There are only otaku. And casual fans. 'Weeaboo' is a 4chan-made up word some otaku use to point at other otaku and basically go "Look at that weeaboo! See, I'm less of an idiot because I am a respectable otaku!" No... No, if you're an otaku, you're no better than the next...

The next post was telling of the forum's atmosphere, making me realize that once again, it was another place I wasn't going to feel I belonged. What else is new? *Sigh*

Poster1: I actually think this is a very popular opinion in our community.
I would almost call it edgy.

Ocean Elf: I call it cliche and annoying, and just plain off-putting. It means I wouldn't belong on that forum, just like so many others I was in for short times or just passed on by altogether.

Poster1: I personally have nothing against religion, as long as it stays at home out of serious business like politics.

Ocean elf: Then he does have something against religion if he thinks it should stay at home, behind closed doors, basically. And it isn't serious? Not serious like politics? *Rolling eyes* Oh, brother!

No. Politics needs to but out of personal, serious matters like religion.

Poster1: And as long as it doesn't encourage it's members to do bad things.

Ocean Elf: Ditto for politics. Unfortunately, politics can and has hurt a lot of people. Especially identity politics, which is intended to hurt people, by design.

SJWs And Their Causes Are Not About Justice.

Terms And Tactics

When Nasty Is Considered Heroic

What really hacks me off is how so many people want to rid fiction, especially si-fi and fantasy, of references to Christianity other than mockery, but then they have to go and stick fake gods/religion everywhere as if that's the coolest most logical thing to do.

So, there have been some things that were really cringy, and a bunch of other stuff that just piled up until I'd had it and called it quits with the various people involved. Mary Sues, pagan stuff, writers against Christianity, cliche characters and names, unrelatable characters, and often set in either medieval fantasy, apocalyptic or post, or centuries into the future. Oh, and angsty vamps, and vampy romance. Ugh.

And in all cases but the blind orphan Mary Sue, the other characters and their writers were, or at least gave a strong impression of being quite anti-Christian if the rp touched on it.

RP is supposed to be fun. When people don't make it fun for me, there is no point sticking around.

So for anyone else sick of PC agendas and anti-Christian sentiment showing up in rp/writing communities, tired old tropes bogging down the rp experience, this could be the place for you.